
Copyrights 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSiT. 



!} — 



A HISTOEY OF 
FRENCH LITERATURE 

FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES 
TO THE GREAT WAR 



BY 

WILLIAM A. NITZE 

AND 

E. PRESTON DARGAN 

PROFESSORS OP FRENCH LITERATURE 
IN THE UNIVERSITY OP CHICAGO 




NEW YORK 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 

1922 






Copyright, 1922, 

BY 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 

First Printing, September 



©CI.A6S6568 


ED IN U. S. A. 


OCT 20 11 





PREFACE 

The present History of French Literature, intended both for 
the general reader and for students, does not aim to be exhaus- 
tive. It is divided into three parts: Medieval, Renaissance 
and Modern; and within these parts it emphasizes in turn the 
chief literary movements and writers, leaving minor tendencies 
and figures out of consideration or mentioning them only inci- 
dentally. Mere lists of names and dates, valuable as they are 
for reference, belong rather to bibliography than to literary his- 
tory as such. Thus our aim has been to give a connected ac- 
count of the " main currents " of French literature from the 
earliest times down to the present day. 

In this attempt we have had several further considerations 
to guide us. In the first place, the book is written primarily for 
American and English readers. The one key to literary 
\ treasures is not erudition but sympathy. Needless to say, we 
would instill in our readers a liking for French literature; 
but such sympathy will come only through an appreciation of 
the French, as distinguished from the Anglo-Saxon, point of 
view. Hence the introductory chapter on the " Spirit of French 
Letters " and, in the body of the book, the frequent references 
to what appear to be dominant French traits. Another result 
of this method is the attention we give to the historical and 
social background. Whether we have succeeded or not, we 
have consistently tried to depict for each age the historical and 
social elements that produced it; briefly of course, with the ex- 
pectation that the reader will complete the outline by reference 
to works dealing directly with these subjects. 

In the second place, the authors are convinced that a litera- 
ture must be learned — if learned is the proper word — by the 
stimulus of suggestion rather than by any dogmatic method. 
The opinions we state are by no means new. They necessarily 
reflect the views of others on the subject; in fact, for each par- 
ticular movement and author, we have tried to discover the best 



iv PREFACE 

authorities, from a scholarly and critical point of view, and to 
incorporate their conclusions in the text and the titles of their 
treatises in the bibliography. Yet in each case we have stated 
these opinions in our own way, with reference to our general 
plan of treatment, and we have not shunned the expression of 
an original opinion when circumstances justified it. We make 
no claim for the absolute value of these views, but we ven- 
ture to hope that they will rouse the reader's interest and 
lead him to formulate ideas of his own on the authors and books 
we have considered. If our book wins new readers for French 
literature itself, our main purpose will have been achieved. 

Again, the authors are well aware that in a work of conden- 
sation such as a history of literature the statement of " facts " 
is necessarily difficult to make. One reason is that the facts in 
a given case are not always ascertainable. We have, as far as 
we have been able, given the correct dates for both writers and 
works of literature. With regard to other facts, such as liter- 
ary sources and influences, we have — especially in doubtful 
cases — cited and even quoted the best authorities on the sub- 
ject. But truth in literary matters, depending as it does on 
interpretation and taste, is of course relative; and we have no 
doubt that many readers, more competent than ourselves, will 
regard much of our material as open to question or in need of 
correction. We do not cling to the determinism of Taine, nor 
do we deny that it expresses a great truth. The French may 
not be a " race," but they are certainly a " nation " with a dis- 
tinct civilization of their own; and it is the history of the liter- 
ary manifestations of this civilization that we have attempted 
to write. If our critics will take the same pains to correct our 
mistakes as we have taken to avoid them, they will earn 
our gratitude and, what is even better, help us to mend our 
ways. 

As for matters of detail, it may be pointed out that the col- 
laborators have divided their task in such a way that the re- 
sponsibility for the treatment of the Middle Ages and the Renais- 
sance (through French Classicism) belongs to W. A. Nitze, and 
for that of Modern Times to E. P. Dargan. Provengal literature 
is not treated by us, nor is the rich Latin literature of the Middle 
Ages, except as these incidentally affect French literature in one 



PREFACE v 

of its own stages. The substance as well as the structure of our 
book owes much, of course, to the admirable treatises of Gaston 
Paris, Lanson and Brunetiere, and in the Medieval and Renais- 
sance periods to the works of Suchier and Mori In the field 
of criticism, Saintsbury's important work has again and again 
been laid under contribution. For Modern Times, the essays 
of Sainte-Beuve and Brunetiere, the treatises of Villemain and 
Taine have been found particularly valuable. To these and to 
our numerous special authorities we here acknowledge obliga- 
tion. For all titles we refer the reader to the selected bibli- 
ography at the end of the work. 

As regards the question of proportion, a word remains to be 
said. The increasing number of chapters and authors in Part 
III is due to the increasing complexity or " heterogeneity " of 
French literature in the last two centuries. Since our intention 
is to stress both ideas and form, a full treatment has been 
accorded to the liberalism of the eighteenth century and to the 
various artistic currents of the nineteenth. This has been done, 
it is hoped, without detracting from the importance of previous 
periods, especially the great Classical Age. 

The illustrations have been chosen to symbolize the spirit of 
each epoch. They are masterpieces dating, in each case, from 
the period under consideration. 

In conclusion, we most sincerely thank those friends and col- 
leagues whose guidance and criticism have been at our disposal. 
Professors Jenkins and Pietsch of the University of Chicago 
have assisted us materially with their knowledge of the Middle 
Ages. In particular, our selections from the Chanson de Roland 
have had the benefit of Professor Jenkins' revision. Our col- 
league, Professor Coleman, has been gracious enough to revise 
the chapters on the early seventeenth century. Professors Lan- 
caster, Lovejoy and Chinard of Johns Hopkins University have 
performed a similar service for portions of the eighteenth and 
nineteenth centuries; and Professor Guerard of the Rice Insti- 
tute has been unsparing in his help on matters concerning mod- 
ern French thought. For additional services, willingly and care- 
fully rendered, we are indebted to Professors Albert Schinz of 
Smith College, Henri David of the University of Chicago, B. 
E. Young of Vanderbilt University and Henry M. Dargan of 



VI 



PREFACE 



the University of North Carolina. Obviously none of these 
friends are responsible for the errors and imperfections of our 
book. It is owing to them, to their generous suggestions and 
criticisms, that its sins of omission and commission are not more 
numerous. On the other hand, if our book has — as we hope — 
points to commend it, their assistance should not be forgotten: 



Secundas res splendidiores facit amicitia. 



Chicago, September, 1921. 



W. A. N. 
E. P. D. 



Note. — In spelling French words, our aim has been to modernize the titles of 
important works. The titles of less well-known works are often given in their 
archaic forms. Citations of text, however, are not modernized until we reach 
the seventeenth century. At the same time, Montaigne's Essais are cited in a 
modernized form according to Jeanroy's Principaux chapitres et extraits de 
Montaigne. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Introduction 1 

PART I: THE MIDDLE AGES 
BOOK I. FEUDALISM AND CHIVALRY 

CHAPTER 

I. The Middle Ages and the Epic 13 

II. The Lyric and the Romance 30 

III. The Allegory and the Early Drama 55 

IV. History, Didactic Literature and Storiology 73 

BOOK II. THE BOURGEOIS INFLUENCE 

I. The Lyric Poets of the School op Machaut and Deschamps . 87 
II. The University and the Humanism of the Fourteenth 

Century 98 

III. The Cyclic Drama and the Farce of MaItre Pathelin. . 104 

IV. Three Individuals: Antoine de La Sale, Villon, Commines. . 114 



PART H: THE RENAISSANCE 

BOOK I. HUMANISM AND THE REFORMATION 

I. The Influence of Italy and the Rhetoriqueur Poets . . . 127 

II. Marot and His Immediate Followers 136 

III. Rabelais and Calvin: the Epicurean and the Stoic 145 

IV. Platonists and Neo-Platonists 161 

BOOK II. LITERARY THEORY AND THE RETURN OF 
THE BOURGEOIS IDEAL 

I. The Doctrine of Imitation and the Pleiade 170 

II. The Chief Poets of the Pleiade 178 

III. Amyot, Montaigne and Brantome 193 

IV. The Age of Henry IV and the Common-sense of Malherbe 207 

BOOK III. PRE-CLASSICISM 
\Si. Social Form and the Salon Writers 219 

II. HONORE d'URFE AND THE ROMANESQUE 229 

vii 



viii CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

III. The Drama Previous to Corneille 238 

IV. Pierre Corneille 251 

V. Descartes 263 

BOOK IV. CLASSICISM 

I. Louis XIV and the Classical Spirit 273 

II. The Writers of Memoirs and Maxims, and Woman Writers . 283 

III. MOL1ERE AND La FONTAINE 291 

IV. Pascal and Racine 306 

V. BOILEAU AND BOSSUET 323 



PART III: MODERN TIMES 

BOOK I. THE TRANSITION FROM CLASSICISM 

I. The Quarrel of Ancients and Moderns: Results 339 

II. Writers of the Transition: La Bruyere, Saint-Simon, 

Fenelon 349 

III. The Eighteenth Century: History and Society 361 



BOOK II. THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

^ I. The Popularizers : Bayle and Fontenelle 373 

v , II. Voltaire : Literature and Life 383 

^ III. Montesquieu 395 

IV. Miscellaneous Writers 406 



BOOK III. THE OLD AND THE NEW GENRES 
/ 

I. Tragedy : Voltaire, Crebillon, Ducis 415 

i/ II. Comedy and Drame 424 

v III. Fiction : Lesage, Marivaux, Prevost 434 

IV. Poetry 444 



BOOK IV. THE WAR OF LIBERATION 

^/Fl. The Encyclopedists and the Later Philosophes 451 

V II. Voltaire at Ferney : Polemics and Philosophy 463 

viii. Diderot 473 



BOOK V. PRE-ROMANTICISM 

I. Rousseau. Saint-Pierre 483 

II. Madame de Stael. Constant 496 

V III. Chateaubriand , 507 



CONTENTS ix 

CHAPTER PAGE 

BOOK VI. ROMANTICISM 

4 I. The Romantic Movement 517 

II. Immediate Predecessors: Nodier, Beranger, Lamartine. . . 527 

III. The Poets : Victor Hugo 534 

IV. The Poets : Musset, Vigny, Gautier 544 

V. The Romantic Drama 553 

VI. The Romantic Novel 564 

VII. Critics and Historians 576 

BOOK VII. REALISM 

I. The Transition: Balzac 585 

II. Augier, Dumas Fils and Henry Becque 595 

II. The Reaction in Poetry : Baudelaire and the Parnassians . 602 

IV. Realistic Fiction: Flaubert and Maupassant 612 

V. Fiction (Continued) : Zola, the Goncourts, Daudet 623 

BOOK VIII. THE AGE OF SCIENCE AND DOUBT 

I. The Critics: Sainte-Beuve' 634 

II. The Philosophers: Comte, Taine, Renan 645 

III. Miscellaneous Writers 657 



BOOK IX. THE END OF THE CENTURY 

I.* In Fiction : Naturalism, Psychology and Other Currents . . 663 

II. In Drama : the Three Movements 679 

III. In Poetry : Sentiment and Symbolism 695 

IV. In^Criticism 711 

Epilogue: Pre- War Literature 720 

Bibliography 739 

Index 767 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

FACING PAGE 

Illustration from a Graal Lancelot (Manuscript) 12 

Illustration from Froissart's Chroniques (Fifteenth Century 

Manuscript) 86 

Raphael, "School of Athens" 126 

Rigaud, "Louis XIV" 272 

Watteau, "L'Embarquement pour Cythere" 364 

Pils, "Rouget de l'lsle chantant la Marseillaise" 448 

Girodet, "LaMise au Tombeau d'Atala" 510 

Bastien-Lepage, "Les Foins" 624 



XI 



INTRODUCTION 

THE SPIRIT OF FRENCH LETTERS 

"L'histoire de la litterature (Tun peuple, j'ai eu occasion de 
vous le dire souvent deja, est l'histoire de sa vie morale, et par- 
tieulierement de sa conscience nationale." Gaston Paris, La Poem 
du moyen age, I, 94. 

It is said that distinctions are invidious. But surely only for 
the unintelligent or uneducated. If we find pleasure in Shake- 
speare, this does not prove that we must dislike Racine. On 
the contrary, a thorough understanding of both authors should 
lead us to like both — but for different reasons. The qualities 
we admire in the Englishman are not and cannot be the traits 
we find in the Frenchman, quite aside from the fact that each 
is a different individual and not the same person. Thus every 
literature, so-called, is an embodiment of the national life. And 
while certain writers, and especially certain literary epochs, are 
less clearly national than others, yet it remains true that no 
author can divorce himself from his people and represent a point 
of view that is really alien to them. Indirectly, at least, he will 
reflect their type of emotion, their brand of ideas, their par- 
ticular way of viewing and expressing things — in a word, their 
psychology or vie morale,' 1 as Gaston Paris says in the 
quotation made above. Hence literature is not only a matter 
of individuals but of groups; and not the least of its functions 
is to portray the interactions between the poet and the social con- 
sciousness of the nation to which he belongs. 

If, then, French literature has certain essentials or funda- 
mental traits, they are not always easy to define, since national 
characteristics appear only by contrast with those of other 
peoples. At the same time, as far as they can be ascertained, 
they are seen in the selection French writers make of their ma- 
terials and in the tendencies they follow in working them out. 
It will be the object of this introductory chapter to state what 
are some of the distinguishing features of French literature. 

1 Let us note, at the outset, that the French word moral means "psychological." 

1 



2 INTRODUCTION 

The remark has been repeatedly made that the French value 
truth more than beauty — not that they scorn the beautiful, but 
their attachment to truth is stronger. To quote one 
of their modern critics: " Ce qu'il nous faut, c'est le 
vrai dans Part encore plus que le beau." As early as the seven- 
teenth century Boileau crystallized this ideal when he wrote: 

Rien n'est beau que le vrai, le vrai seul est aimable; 
II doit regner partout, et meme dans la fable. 

If we substitute the word " rational " for the word " true " in 
these quotations, 2 we shall come nearer to the French point of 
view; for French art, and especially French literature, is largely 
a product of the human reason. With English literature it thus 
offers an interesting contrast. 

We of English tradition are accustomed to look upon a liter- 
ary work as " holding the mirror up to nature " — to use Shake- 
speare's phrase. We see life as an endless complexity, and by 
nature we mean not only man but man in his surroundings, as 
part of the natural world that enfolds him. To a greater degree 
than the French, we are conscious of the fact that the universe 
holds us in its grip; and we struggle to be " free," to make our- 
selves felt for what we are as " individuals." But whatever the 
problem may be with which man contends, to us the human be- 
ing is never separated from the background of reality in which 
life is passed. So that Dickens, like Wordsworth, like Milton, 
like Chaucer, deals with the setting of human character as a 
matter of prime and essential importance. " Character," said 
Emerson, " is nature in the highest form." Thus English liter- 
ature is primarily the record and the product of individuals, in 
their manifold surroundings. It is varied rather than homo- 
geneous. It deals with things rather than with ideas. It is 
imaginative rather than logical; concrete rather than abstract. 
It tends to embrace creation and not merely the life of man. 

In comparison, French literature is essentially a reflection of 
the mind. Not only the treatment of life but the French con- 
ception of it is intellectual. Types, not individuals, appeal to 
the logical sense of the French; and types are not direct obser- 

2 French distinguishes between the two types of truth, rational truth and 
truth to fact, by the two expressions le vrai and la viritL 



INTRODUCTION 3 

vations of life but deductions or classifications we make from it. 
The Frenchman views' life primarily as idea, secondarily as fact. 
His chief interest lies not so much in character or nature as in 
the permanent traits of humanity and the universality of their 
application. Hence his method is analytic and comparative, 
whereas ours is empirical and absolute. He works from the sur- 
face of life inward, not from the kernel to the surface. Meta- 
physics is not his forte — that " art de s'egarer avec methode," 
as Michelet called it. The French have no counterpart to a 
great lyric genius like Shelley, who takes his own visions for 
reality, who hopes 

till Hope creates 
From its own wreck the thing it contemplates. 

Yet England has no equivalent to Voltaire: the embodiment of 
the pure reason and the sworn enemy of all illusion. The follow- 
ing selection from Montaigne might be taken as a general defini- 
tion of the French point of view, so widespread is its applica- 
tion to the French: 

I propose a life mean and without luster, but 'tis all one; 
all moral philosophy is applied as well to a private life as to 
one of the greatest employment. Every man carries the entire 
form of the human condition. Authors have hitherto com- 
municated themselves to the people by some particular and 
foreign mark; I, the first of any, by my universal being, as 
Michel de Montaigne, not as a grammarian, a poet or a 
lawyer. If the public complain that I speak too much of 
myself, I complain that they do not think exclusively of 
themselves. 

French literature, therefore, is social. " La critique etrangere 
et la critique franchise se sont accordees a le proclamer," said 

« • ^.,.x Gaston Paris. The public, whose approval Mon- 
Sociability , . . , < . ' _ , -. A , 

taigne craves, is always in a French writer s confi- 
dence. He writes to the public, for the public, about public 
questions generally. Discussion is the breath of French life, as 
conversation is one of its greatest arts. Even so individual a 
writer as Pascal addresses his Pensees to an unseen companion; 
and Pascal said, "the ego is hateful." The dialogue is a fa- 
vorite form in French, from the medieval debat down to the 
confidente role in Classical French drama. Descartes defined 



4 INTRODUCTION 

reading as " a conversation with the best people of bygone ages." 
And one of the most personal of modern poets, Musset, liked 
poetry because " it is intelligible to the world, though spoken by 
the poet alone." 

As a consequence, French writers choose their themes broadly 
with reference to their application. They seem to ask not only: 
is this my problem? but also, is it your problem? because, in 
Montaigne's words, it is a fundamentally human problem, as well 
as the problem of a grammarian, a poet or a lawyer. Look 
at any representative French work and you will see how 
generally true this is. The author makes an abstraction 
of his experience and then views it in the form of action. He 
exploits his idea or emotion to the full extent of its social 
value. 

This accounts for the hospitality of French art, to which in a 
very real sense nothing human is inacceptable. " The [French] 
cathedrals," says Mr. Brownell, " are not feudal. They are the 
products of a spirit partly ecclesiastical, partly secular, but 
always social — the true Gallo-Roman spirit which, great as 
was the perfection attained by German feudalism in France, 
constantly struggled against and finally conquered its foreign 
Frankish foe." The same thing is true of French letters. Time 
and again, the French have borrowed an idea from without: it 
is they who socialize the idea, widen its application, standardize 
it, and thereupon send it broadcast over the world to bear 
fruit in a larger, more extended form. Thus during the Middle 
Ages France took over the Germanic idea of obligation and, 
through the efforts of her scholars and her poets, made it domi- 
nant over Europe; likewise in the Renaissance she chose the 
Italian idea of formal perfection or virtu, and in the later 
eighteenth century the northern idea of personality, and worked 
them over into their broadest, most social expression. France 
has been, and still is, the intellectual clearing-house of Europe. 

A literature that is social is necessarily a literature of forrr^ 
fully as much as of content. To be sure, the sense of form 
has grown in France since the sixteenth century, 
Form ^owing to the cult of antiquity. But the trait is 

nevertheless inherent in French culture. Kant once said: " The 
French may have the flowers of the tree of knowledge but they 



INTRODUCTION 5 

rarely possess its roots," and sweeping as the generalization is, 
there is this truth in it: that to them the form is j)ften as im- 
portant as the idea. By form the French mean technique; 
that is, the observed principles or laws of form rather than the 
ethos of form itself, which is always individual, as it is in the 
Divine Comedy or in Goethe's Faust, or in most of Shake- 
speare's tragedies. A French play or novel is a very conscious 
product: the author is an adept in the laws of the genre, and 
his work is generally the best that training and talent can pro- 
duce. At least, a minimum is left to chance or individual in- 
spiration; the maximum is artistry, schooling, the interaction 
of critical power and the creative mind. The result is a high 
average: general proficiency in place of sporadic preeminence. 
" La FranclTest^n tout un pays de moyennes," said a distin- 
guished Russian in a spirit of praise. Probably no literature 
has been so productive or so continuous as that of France. Cer- 
tainly none is so rich in criticism, in reflections on the manner 
of life. Thus, in a very real sense, it is possible to speak of the 
" schools " of French literature, in which the critics play an im- 
portant role. And the highest literary expression in France is, 
as Anatole France says of the landscape about Florence, une 
parfaite et mesuree ceuvre d'art. On the other hand, idiosyncrasy 
of genius has never flourished there as it has elsewhere, and it 
would be useless to look in French literature for a Hamlet, an 
Iliad or a Don Quixote. 

It is clear that whatever the French may lack in range, they 
make up in homogeneity and poise. Witness their language with 
its strong Latin tradition toward balance and unity. The few 
words which the Roman conquerors of Gaul took over from the 
Celts did not perceptibly affect the word-stock of French. Even 
the Franks, whose conquest of Gaul in the fifth century gave 
to France her name and many of her institutions, did not alter 
the language except by the addition of a few hundred new 
words. So that in structure and even vocabulary French is an 
offspring of Popular Latin as it was spoken by Caesar's soldiers 
in Gaul, supplemented from time to time by other elements, 
one of which is Literary Latin. Here again, England presents 
an interesting contrast. There the Germanic form of speech, 
Anglo-Saxon, triumphed; until in the eleventh century (after 



6 INTRODUCTION 

1066) it was temporarily thrust aside and French became the 
language of the higher classes, and consequently of literature. 
Hence English is dual in nature; at once Teutonic and Latin, 
a mixture of two opposing tendencies, which manifest them- 
selves again and again in English writing; whereas, compara- 
tively speaking, Fr<ench is a unit, and the literature as well as 
the language is informed throughout with the Latin genius of 
clarity and precision. " Ce qui n'est pas clair, n'est pas 
frangais," said Rivarol in a famous essay on the universality 
of French. To state a thing in French is to state it well ; that is, 
with accuracy and distinction. Renan affirmed that " truth lies 
in a shading " (" la verite est dans une nuance ") . The shadings, 
those subtle boundaries of truth, rarely escape a French writer's 
eye. 

At the same time, there is a tendency in French to overstate an 
idea or emotion, to make it more pressing and effective than it 
really is. An excellent example is the French drama, where the 
difficulty presented so often leads to a logical but not to a very 
convincing conclusion. Hervieu's Le Dedale and Bernstein's 
Samson, to cite only modern instances, are dramatic but they 
are inconclusive: the cases depicted are too special to warrant 
a general inference such as the dramatist would have us make. 
The best literature proves nothing since demonstration is not 
its function. Or take Maupassant in the realm of fiction. As 
an expression of irony, of human stupidity, his Necklace {La 
Parure) is perfect, but as a picture of reality, this story is an 
argumentum in vacuo. It assumes a mistake — the necklace is 
" paste," not genuine — and it carries this mistake to an abstract 
conclusion. Thus the love of argument, so strong in the French, 
is also a limitation; granting that logical precision makes for 
clearness and intelligibility, it satisfies the mind but not the 
imagination.) Yet, in the hands of a genius like Racine, this 
very control intensifies the emotion and achieves effects of flaw- 
less and inevitable beauty. 

Such an attention to form and method has given to French 
poetry a tendency which the Anglo-Saxon may find hard to 
grasp. France has had many wonderful poets: Hugo, Musset, 
Vigny, Chenier, Ronsard, Villon; and her collected poetry fills 
volumes. Nevertheless, French poetry has the externality of a 



INTRODUCTION 7 

fine art. The Gallic spirit is inventive. It is too critical, too 
self-conscious, too mathematical and logical to be deeply lyrical. 
The social instinct works havoc with the world of illusion and 
mystery in which the great lyrist moves. At all events, the 
French illusions are short-lived. They are the illusions of the 
market-place, they affect the masses more than the individual: 
honor, vanity, glory, equality — rather than loyalty, ambition, 
immortality, freedom. And the loneliness of genius, while it is 
seen in such a writer as Vigny, is rare in France. So, too, the 
French poet's attachments are to the visible world — the world 
of light and sunshine. It has been said that no verses express 
more clearly this side of the French temper than Regnier's 
Le Secret: 

Car la forme, l'odeur et la beaute des choses 
Sont le seul souvenir dont on ne souffre pas. 

Racine, the poet of deep feeling and with a vision turned in- 
ward, manages to externalize his emotions in the most tangible 
of forms: " II rase la prose," observes Lamaitre, " mais avec des 
ailes." Or take Hugo, who has sweep and sustained utterance, 
and a gift of imagery such as few poets can equal: again it is the 
artist in him that dominates the lyrist; his power of execution 
is greater than his inspiration, and his verse is oratorical and 
brilliant far more than it is passionately deep and sincere. If, 
then, the " lyric cry " is rare in France, and the quality of 
French verse is prevailingly temperate and moderate in com- 
parison with ours, let us not forget that French poetry is for- 
mally the more artistic. There are " gems " of French verse 
which as regards technical perfection it would be difficult to 
match in other literatures. The French are apt at seizing the 
fleeting and transitory aspects of man's nature, at immortalizing 
a mood or whim, at endowing not only the humble but the 
commonplace with the eternity of art. The much-quoted line 
of Musset: 

Mon verre n'est pas grand, mais je bois dans mon verre, 

well expresses the crowded experience which French verse can 
portray, and Musset for all his technical imperfections is a great 
French poet. 



8 INTRODUCTION 

On the other hand, while French poetry is often like prose, it l 
must not be forgotten that French prose is in a class by itself.] 
There are pages of Pascal, Flaubert, Rabelais, Chateaubriand, 
Anatole France, which are superior to anything else that has 
ever been written. Here the national genius for expression 
comes to full fruition. Rarely does one find in French prose an 
idea that is obscure, a character whose psychology is not intel- 
ligible, a situation the outlines of which are not visible to the 
inner eye. Of Flaubert, Henry James says: " To be intensely 
definite and perfectly positive, to know so well what he meant 
that he could at every point strikingly and conclusively verify 
it, was the first of his needs." Moreover, style to the French is 
at once the garment and the method of thought. /The control 
the French show in their writing is proverbial. Limpid, de^ 
scriptive, harmonious, suave, picturesque, as the case may be, 
French prose is the elaboration of thought, the presentation of 
the idea in action, the concrete realization of the impression the 
author wishes to convey. " Le style est Fhomme meme," said 
Buffon, and deflected as this phrase has been from its original 
meaning, the statement is often literally true. It is frequently 
in style, rather than in newness of idea, that the individuality 
of the French writer triumphs ; and the personal accent we look ! 
for in literature the French manifest not in what they say but \ 
in the way they say it. Hence, of the two kinds of prose, la 
bonne prose and la belle prose, France exemplifies the latter. 

II 

To sum up: the dominant traits of French literature are poise, 
harmony, reason, sympathy; a sense of structure and a sense of 
delicacy; a preference for ideas over things, but for 
Summary ac tive social ideas, not metaphysical personal ones. 
French literature is an immediate reflection of the esprit 
gaulois: brilliant, vivacious, good-natured, ironic, curious of 
everything essentially human; as M. Lanson has said: "more 
sensible than sensuous, but more sensuous than ethical." A race 
singularly conscious of itself, firm in the conviction that: 

all the world's a stage 
And all the men and women merely players. 



INTRODUCTION 9 

Consciously to play a part in life, to be an actor and at the same 
time an observer and a critic, never to take life too seriously 
nor yet to neglect it; this is the touchstone of the French point 
of view, and when all is said, French literature is its expression. 

Many readers will therefore find in French authors a marked 
uniformity; or rather they will fail to see that variety must be 
sought in elaboration and detail, and not in background or 
theme. They will miss the more pronounced display of per- 
sonality, the greater emphasis on idiosyncrasy, to which English 
literature has made them accustomed — often overlooking the 
fact that they have been blind to the swift analysis, the care- 
ful distinctions, the exquisite sense of form wherewith the 
greatest French writers have set forth life. Thus, little can be 
gained by reading a French writer hastily or with insufficient 
knowledge of the language. The reader must weigh the phrases, 
evaluate the words, institute comparisons, take account of the 
fact that the highest art is apparently the most simple; other- 
wise the literature of France will remain to him, in large meas- 
ure, a book sealed with seven seals. 

Further, the intellectual and emotional relations of the 
French are not primarily moral, in the English sense of the 
word. This could hardly be expected of a nation which views life 
so clearly as contact with humanity or to which living itself is an 
" art." " Montaigne," says Emerson, " is the frankest and 
honestest of men." You cannot deal with the social ideas on a 
large scale and not be outspoken. On the whole, the French 
would rather boast of imaginary crimes than pose as more vir- 
tuous than they are. With us conduct is personal and there- 
fore inviolate; with the French it is conventional and thus more 
easily shifted to others' shoulders. Moral lapses in the strict 
sense are more easily pardoned in France than lapses in good 
form or etiquette, since the former affect the individual and not 
society directly. Moliere remarks : " On veut bien etre me- 
diant ; mais on ne veut point etre ridicule " — a distinctly social 
attitude, in harmony with his conception of comedy and its flay- 
ing of the social vices: affectation, hypocrisy, avarice and mis- 
anthropy. For Moliere's Le Misanthrope is a " comedy," how- 
ever tragic its chief character may seem to Anglo-Saxon eyes. 
On the other hand, in our workaday world nothing is a safer 



10 INTRODUCTION 

guide than le bon sens — and bon sens, as the social reason is 
called, has generally been uppermost in French character. 

Lastly, the doctrinaire attitude of trusting to ideas is 
what the person of Germanic traditions finds hardest to under- 
stand. We are the children of expediency. We react more 
readily to impulse or sentiment — to the " inner fact of things," 
as Carlyle used to say — and we distrust logic. Centuries of 
struggle with the material universe have impressed on us the fact 
that theory and practice are two very different things, and we 
would follow our instinct rather than reason the thing out. 

Not so the French. The one definite link between the Gauls 
whom Caesar describes and the modern French is their passion 
for ideas. Being and thinking may be at variance, therefore 
it is the duty of man to make them one — that is, to identify 
facts with logic. In short, the problem of humanity is to make 
the universe rational. A dream, we should say. To this the 
French reply in the phrase of Descartes: " je pense, done je 
suis"; and in its length and breadth their literature is a con- 
scious striving to realize this ideal. In general, English litera- 
ture is more lyrical and varied, Italian literature possesses a 
richer and more voluptuous sense of beauty, Spanish literature is 
closer to the well-springs of popular inspiration in the ballad 
and the epic — but French literature is by all odds the most 
broadly human: it speaks to the large audience of les honnetes 
gens the world over, and for him who has mastered the French 
language it does so in terms that are at once stimulating to the 
mind and satisfying to the artistic sense. 



PART I 
THE MIDDLE AGES 



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BOOK I 
FEUDALISM AND CHIVALRY 

CHAPTER I 
THE MIDDLE AGES AND THE EPIC 

The Middle Ages in France extend from the treaty of Ver- 
dun in 843 to the expedition of Charles VIII into Italy in 1494. 
The first date represents the earliest recognition of the French as 
a nation, and the second their appearance as a world-power vying 
with other nations, notably with Spain and England, for the 
political control of Europe. Between these dates lies an inter- 
esting and significant development which, however transitional 
it may seem on the surface, has a distinct character of its own. 

The ruling features of this era are : the Christianization of cul- 
ture, with its emphasis on man's sinful nature — the redemp- 
tion of which is considered essential ; the f eudalization of society 
and the rise of chivalry as an expression of the new social order ; 
and, finally, the growth of city life under the control of a bour- 
geois class. The last division is coincident roughly with the 
Middle French period (fourteenth and fifteenth centuries) as 
distinguished from the Old French or medieval period proper. 
If we add to these features the growing importance of Paris as 
a political and intellectual center, the chief elements of the en- 
tire epoch lie before us. 

The collapse of the Empire of Charlemagne marks the begin- 
ning of France. With all his enthusiasm for Latin culture, 
Charlemagne was virtually a Teutonic monarch; so that when 
in 843 the country west of the Meuse, the Saone and the Rhone 
fell to the sceptre of Charles the Bald, it was the birth of a new 
nation that men witnessed. The language of this territory had 
received formal recognition a year earlier. The dialect of Popu- 
lar Latin spoken by Charles' subjects was no longer the same 
speech that the Franks had found when they invaded Gaul. It 

13 



14 THE MIDDLE AGES AND THE EPIC 

had undergone changes in structure and especially in vocabulary, 
which, while in no sense identifying it with the lingua teutonica 
of the Germanic tribes, yet distinguish it sharply from the lingua 
romana as spoken in the South. Some of these differences ap- 
pear in the Serments de Strasbourg of 842. Here, Louis the 
German and Charles the Bald pledge themselves in each other's 
language to maintain their respective interests against their 
brother Lothaire. Louis' part of this covenant is the earliest 
document extant in the langue d'oil or French, and although it 
has no literary value it is important evidence of the fact that a 
national speech is being formed. 

But the kingdom of Charles is only partly France. The des- 
tinies of the country are henceforth distinct from those of the 
rest of continental Europe, but they are not yet strictly under 
French control. The imperial regime is weakened, notably by 
the spread of feudalism in the ninth century; its power, how- 
ever, is definitely broken only with the death of Louis V in 987. 
With the accession of Hugh Capet, Count of Paris, in that year 
the Carolingian epoch ends completely, and the history of 
France proper, of her institutions, her culture, her art and her 
literature, begins. 

It is not our purpose to trace that history except as it is re- 
flected in literature. At the same time, it may be useful to re- 
Cultural ca ^ that tne Duchy of France, or the territory 
Aspects immediately surrounding Paris, is the nucleus from 
which the national development spread. Although Hugh Capet 
was nominally King of France, his real power extended little be- 
yond his own domain and those fiefs whose obedience he could 
command. Thus, broadly viewed, the history of medieval 
France was a struggle of the monarchy against feudal aggression 
on the part of the great barons. It was a struggle waged with 
varying fortunes until one by one the great provinces are 
brought under the rule of the crown: Normandy in 1204, Anjou 
and Languedoc shortly after, Champagne in 1274, Provence in 
1486; and, finally, a highly centralized state is established. In 
this nation the three dominant races of Europe are represented 
— the Nordic in Normandy and the northeast, the Alpine in Sa- 
voy and Auvergne, and the Mediterranean in the south. The 
French, therefore, are a racial epitome of Western Europe. 



OLD FRENCH DIALECTS 15 

Turning now from this hasty glance at history to the condi- 
tions of medieval society in general, we may note first: that 
in place of a uniform language for the whole territory each prov- 
ince develops its own dialect. The main dialects are: Norman 
and Picard in the north, Champenois and Burgundian in the 
east, Angevin in the west, with Francian or the dialect of the 
Duchy of France in the center. While these dialects belong 
to the langue d'o'il or Old French, just as the langue d'oc or Old 
Provengal consists of. the various forms of southern speech, none 
of them is supreme during the medieval period. Each has 
its official and literary monuments — the Vie de Saint-Alexis, 
Wace's Brut, the Lais of Marie de France are in Norman; a 
masterpiece like the Aucassin et Nicolette is in Picard; the ro- 
mances of Crestien de Troyes are partly in Champenois, and so 
on. Not until the end of the twelfth century does Francian 
assume the leading role. And even then it is still far from 
being the sole literary speech, although the tendency is more 
and more in that direction. In 1173 Gamier de Pont-Sainte- 
Maxence (near Paris) is able to boast: 

Mis langages est buens, car en France fui nez; 

and the recognition of Paris in the thirteenth century as the 
intellectual capital of Europe does much to establish Francian — 
especially the speech of Paris — as standard French. Whoever 
knows his Chaucer will recall the famous quip on the Prioress 
in the Canterbury Tales: 

And Frensch sche spak ml faire and fetysly— 
After the scole of Stratford atte Bowe, 
For Frensch of Parys was to hire unknowe. 

But important as it is, the question of language is secondary 
to the cultural aspects of the age. And in these the laity were 
not the prime movers. Latin, not French, was the language of 
the clergy, and the Middle Ages are primarily an ecclesiastical 
epoch. When Hugh Capet relinquished the rich abbeys of Saint- 
Denis, Saint-Germain-des-Pres, Saint-Riquier and Saint- 
Valery to the clergy, he received in exchange the title of " De- 
fender of the Church," and France became, if not the focus, at 
least the mainstay of Roman Christianity. 



16 THE MIDDLE AGES AND THE EPIC 

The influence of the church shows itself on every hand: in 
the development of new lands and out-of-the-way districts, in 
the building of monasteries and churches, in giving impetus to 
the movement which leads to the crusades in Spain and in the 
East, but above all in the spread of such learning and culture 
as the age allowed. It was the clergy who composed the music, 
developed the arts of MS illumination, of woodcarving and the 
like, and it is to them we owe much of the classical literature 
that survived the destruction of Rome by the barbarians. 

It is but natural that they gave to their work, secular as well 
as sacred, an ecclesiastical interpretation. Alone responsible 
for man's spiritual guidance, they reinterpreted — as every age 
has done — the past in terms of the present. But they had no 
sense of history, or rather their history was the history of the 
" soul," as revealed in the Bible and the writings of the Church 
Fathers. Thus they saw life mainly from one angle, that of 
salvation; and all created things, including Nature herself, as- 
sumed a symbolic, theological value. To them Aristotle was 
no longer an independent thinker, a philosopher who had sought 
the boundaries of truth, but the inventor of the laws of reason; 
and reason was given man, they thought, to apprehend the faith. 
Through faith alone, it was thought, the human being attained 
to complete knowledge, the wisdom of God which passeth under- 
standing. Credo ut intelligam (" I believe in order that I may 
understand"), said St. Anselm, a statement that we may con- 
trast with the Cogito ergo sum (" I think, therefore I am ") of 
Descartes. 

Thus the medieval method is exegesis. The sage is he who 
can interpret the divine order in things by discovering their 
underlying sensus or " meaning " — the idea recurs in the Old 
French romances (see Ch. II). And the dominant philosophical 
idea is that of " fixity." For the church taught that the universe, 
in its narrow scope as men then knew it, according to the Ptole- 
maic system, was limited. There is no conscious effort to change 
it, to widen its horizons, to better its conditions materially. The 
highest aim is the liberation from sin, its avoidance or its expia- 
tion. But since the age is at once too sophisticated and too 
childlike to grasp in full measure the spiritual side of Chris- 
tianity, it conceives of it picturesquely, in terms of a material 



FEUDAL SOCIETY 17 

Heaven, a material Hell and a material Purgatory, in hier- 
archies of saints and demons, in pilgrimages, fastings and physi- 
cal suffering. He who gave alms, gave them primarily to re- 
deem himself, not to benefit his neighbor. A crucified Saviour, 
a Christ victorious through physical pain, is the quintessence 
of the mystical, medieval spirit. 

But if the church dominates society in its outlook upon life, 
the forms of the church are themselves the product of social 
forces. These are of course feudal. The guiding force of feud- 
alism is obligation. The freeman and small proprietor, unable to 
guard his own interests, " commended himself " to his more 
powerful neighbor, and thereupon received back his property in 
the shape of a " fief," for the loan of which he promised service 
or money, or both. That is, feudalism is a mutual guarantee 
of person and property in an age of weak government. It flour- 
ished in France from about the ninth to the fourteenth century, 
and it gave to medieval life its distinctive hierarchal form. 

The result was that, while in the tenth and eleventh centuries 
the political power of the church is still great and that of the 
king — in reality little more than a tribal leader — is weak, 
the twelfth century witnessed a notable change. Not only does 
feudalism become a national institution but society itself con- 
forms to its ideals, and the distinctions between noble and serf, 
knight and yeoman, courtois (" courtly ") and vilain (" vul- 
gar ") are definitely worked out. Thus four great classes or 
castes arise: (1) the nobles, (2) the clergy, (3) the townsfolk 
or bourgeois and (4) the peasantry. In addition, the crusades 
begin and chivalry as a military and social organization spreads 
over Europe. In short, polite or courtois society comes into 
being. All this gives to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries a 
cultural florescence in which art and literature share. But, like 
everything else, human institutions decay; by degrees the mon- 
archy allies itself with the lower classes, especially the bour- 
geoisie, the power of the great nobles wanes and feudalism dis- 
integrates. Finally, with the fall of the feudal order, the 
medieval " fixity " is broken and the Renaissance sets in. The 
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries mark the beginning of this 
change. 

The literature of such an epoch is necessarily one-sided. For 



18 THE MIDDLE AGES AND THE EPIC 

the emphasis is on one ideal, faith in the established order, and 
on the expression of one dominant emotion, that of honor or 
obligation to one's trust. The knight does homage to his 
liege, the courtier to his lady, the cleric to his God ; in much 
the same manner and in about the same terms. But because 
of this restriction the literature is vivid and intense, poetic and 
imaginative rather than real, and, like all mystical literature, 
it is fraught with personal longings and with the aspiration, in the 
words of St. Augustine, " to grasp the infinite within the vessel 
of the finite." In the second place, it is didactic and formalistic. 
It moralizes on life, lays down a code for human conduct, even in 
the affairs of the heart, and neglects the intrinsic values of life 
itself, such as beauty, individual happiness and justice. Nothing 
could be more significant than the numerous bestiaries, 
lapidaries and astrologies (computi) in which the Middle Ages 
sought to reveal the symbolic or ethical meaning of Nature her- 
self. When the reaction begins, the note that is heard is satire 
and irony, a reflection of Gallic common-sense, voicing its pro- 
test in the fabliaux and the beast-epic. 
Thus the divisions of medieval literature are mainly these: 

(1) The saints' legends, the epics or chansons de geste, di- 
dactic treatises of various kinds, and the serious drama. 
These are mostly clerical ; at least, their source of inspiration 
is the church, directly in the saints' legends and the drama, 
or indirectly in the epic. 

(2) The various forms of the lyric, — largely an importa- 
tion from Provence — the romances of chivalry and the alle- 
gory. Here the inspiration comes largely from aristocratic 
feudal society, or what we may call by the generic name of 
courtly or courtois. 

(3) The increasing current of bourgeois expression, appear- 
ing first in the fabliaux and the beast-epic, then in the second 
part of the Roman de la Rose, and finally in various produc- 
tions of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. 

In October, 878, the discovery of the supposed bones of a 
Christian saint was made in Barcelona, Spain. This event led to 
the composition in French of the church " sequence " of Sainte 
Eulalie — so far as we know, the first French work of literary 






CHANSONS DE GESTE 19 

merit. It inaugurates the large literature in the vernacular, in- 
spired by the passion of piety, of which the saint's lives of Saint 
Leger (tenth century) and Saint-Alexis (about 1050) 
The Epic are ear iy ? an( j t some extent illustrious, examples. 
A short poem on the Passion (tenth century) should be 
added to these as showing the beginnings of French literary 
composition. But whatever incidental interest these works may 
have, they do not yet reflect a truly national spirit. To find 
this we must turn to the French epic, or chansons de geste. 

The title geste (Lat. gesta) originally meant deeds, and the 
" songs of deeds " are the products of the race which Hugh Capet 
and his successors were called upon to govern. As the number 
of epic poems increased, the jongleurs or " minstrels " who sang 
them arranged them in .families or " cycles," each headed by 
the name of an ancestor. Thus the poems concerned with 
Charlemagne and his family went under the name of Pepin, or 
the geste du roi; others treating of the south of France and its 
struggle with the Saracen invaders, under the names of Garin 
de Monglane or Guillaume d'Orange; while those relating the 
deadly strife of the feudal barons among themselves were classed 
under the name of Doon de Mayence. But this classification, 
probably made long after the composition of the actual epic, is 
conventional rather than real. The various groups are inter- 
related, and other groups besides those mentioned existed. A 
separate cycle is that of the crusades. To it belong such poems 
as the Chanson de Jerusalem and the Chanson d'Antioche, and 
linked to the crusade- cycle are romantic compositions like the 
Chevalier au cygne — the story of Lohengrin — and Godefroi de 
Bouillon, the ancestor of the House of Brabant. In the four- 
teenth century this last group became the object of burlesque 
and parody, a fate that awaited all epic and chivalric expres- 
sion at the close of the Middle Ages. 

In form the chansons de geste consist of laisses or stanzas, 
composed at first on one vowel-rime or assonance, and later on 
one rime, for each laisse, the whole being set to music. The 
stanzas are of unequal length and are written, generally but not 
always, in ten-syllable verse, which is the heroic verse of the 
French until Ronsard's time, when it was superseded by the 
twelve-syllable, or Alexandrine. 



20 THE MIDDLE AGES AND THE EPIC 

Since the epic celebrates heroes for the most part contem- 
poraneous with Charlemagne, who himself is the focus of a group 
of poems, the theory early arose that the epic is Germanic in 
origin and inspiration. Of this theory there are several varia- 
tions. One view is that the Frankish invaders of Gaul sang 
epico-lyric songs or cantilenae — somewhat like our English 
ballads — and that, although none of these is extant in the orig- 
inal form, the epic itself is due to a combination of them made 
by the jongleurs. Another hypothesis is that there existed a sort 
of " poetic history " constructed out of the legendary remnants 
of the Germanic past, and that this, transmitted either by writ- 
ing or by word of mouth, inspired the extant poems, none of 
which antedate the close of the eleventh century. 

The modern view combats these earlier theories by affirming 
that the French epic is virtually contemporaneous in origin with 
the twelfth-century chansons. In other words, the epic ■ — it is 
now thought — was the immediate product of the warlike condi- 
tions of the eleventh and twelfth centuries in France: the period 
of pilgrimages to holy places, of expeditions against the Sara- 
cens in Spain, and of the wars of the crusades. The part that 
I Charlemagne has in it is a recollection of the past, but a con- 
scious one, supplied by proselyting monks from monastery 
chronicles and shreds of oral tradition for ecclesiastical and 
national ends. Thus the chansons de geste would have origi- 
nated at the hands of some poet along one of the great pilgrimage 
routes leading to St. James of Compostella in Spain, St. Peter's 
in Rome, or some shrine within the borders of France. In any 
case, French feudalism and the Christian church combine to 
make the epic what it is, and whatever view we take as to its 
ultimate origin, the actual epic belongs to the twelfth century. 

The greatest and probably the earliest example of the epic is 
the Chanson de Roland, in 4002 assonanced verses. Found in 
The this form in a manuscript of the end of the twelfth 

" Rolana " century (now in the Bodleian library at Oxford) , the 
work itself must be nearly a century older. The poet Wace (in 
1160) affirms that the minstrel Taillefer chanted a Song of Ro- 
land at Hastings in 1066. Later versions occur in the Latin prose 
Pseudo-Turpin, which is part of a pilgrimage guide to Compo- 
stella, and in the Carmen de proditione Guenonis, emphasizing 



THE SONG OF ROLAND 21 

the treachery of Ganelon. In its French form, however, the 
Roland stands at the threshold of a literature of which it is one 
of* the most inspired and characteristic expressions. 

The story is simple and fairly commonplace. For seven years 
Charles " the king, our mighty emperor " has battled against 
the Saracens in Spain. Bereft of his strongholds, Marsile, the 
Saracen — who differs from a Christian only by being a pagan 
— sends delegates to Charles to promise peace falsely. The 
embassy is headed by Blancandrin, a wise pagan, who conspires 
with Ganelon for the death of Roland, nephew of Charles and 
bravest of the French. Ganelon is no coward, but he hates 
Roland for the obvious reason that Roland, rich in worldly pos- 
sessions, is his step-son: 

" Qo set horn bien que jo sui tis padrastres." 

Thus Ganelon's hatred becomes the ruin of the French. 

Won by the promises of Marsile, Charles withdraws his main 
army across the Pyrenees to celebrate Michaelmas at Aix, the 
minster-town. Roland, left behind in Spain with the rear- 
guard of 20,000, including the flower of French knighthood (the 
Twelve Peers) , is attacked at Roncevaux near the defiles of the 
Pyrenees by an overwhelming host of Saracens. Oliver, his 
boon companion, who personifies wisdom as Roland does 
bravery — 

Rodlanz est proz et Oliviers est sages 

Roland is brave and Oliver is wise — 

scents the danger and pleads with his friend, but in vain, to 
summon the Emperor's aid. The French are massacred. One 
by one they fall until of the Twelve Peers only two or three are 
left. Then, at last, Roland blows his horn and, with his failing 
strength, summons Charles: 

Rodlanz at mis Tolifant a sa boche, 
Empeint lo bien, par grant vertut lo sonet. 
Halt sont li pui e la voiz ert molt longe, 
Granz xxx. liwes l'odirent il respondre. 

Unto his lips he raised the ivory horn, 
And from his breast drew forth a mighty blast; 
High are the hills the soaring strain breaks o'er 
And thirty leagues the answering echoes roll. 



22 THE MIDDLE AGES AND THE EPIC 

In a last effort to break his sword in order to save it from the 
pagans, Roland sacrifices himself for his king, his country and 
his honor. 

Charles braves Ganelon's scorn to hasten to the rescue. But, 
although the Almighty arrests the sun in its course to grant him 
time for vengeance, when Charles arrives Roland is dead. Ab- 
solved of his sins by Turpin of Rheims, the archbishop, he lies 
amid his fallen companions, with his face turned toward France: 

Deus i tramist son angele cherubin 
E saint Michiel de la Mer del Peril, 
Ensembl'od els sainz Gabriel i vint; 
L'anme del conte portent en paredis. 

God sent to him His angel cherubim, 
Saint Michael of the Peril of the Sea, 
Together with them came holy Gabriel. 
To Paradise they bear the Count's soul home. 

Having crushed the Saracens, Charles returns to France with 
the bodies of his beloved knights. Aide, Roland's betrothed, 
falls dead at Charlemagne's feet. Ganelon is brought to jus- 
tice and torn to pieces by four stallions, while the Emperor 
under the weight of his sorrows, and despite his two hundred 
years, lives wearily on. 

Historically the poem rests on the slightest of foundations — 
the expedition of Charles into Spain in 778, an episode of which 
was the destruction of his rear-guard by the Basques in the 
Pyrenees. Among the slain, according to the chronicler Einhard, 
who reports the event, was Hraodlandus, Britannici limitis prae- 
jectus; that is, Roland prefect of the March of Brittany. 

Concerning the author we know next to nothing, save that he 
may be identical with the Turoldus mentioned at the end of the 
last laisse: 

Ci fait la geste que Turoldus declinet. 

Here ends the poem which Turoldus relates. 

But whoever he was (whether or not an archbishop of Bayeux 
by that name), his poetic gift was of the highest; to this his 
poem bears ample testimony. 

In the first place, the poem is a unit in subordinating 
details to the theme of Christian feudal valor. Religion and 



THE SONG OF ROLAND 23 

patriotism are one; the knights of Charles fight for the greater 
glory of Christian France: la dolce France, la Tere major-. 

Paien ont tort e Chrestien ont dreit 
Wrong the pagans, right the Christians are — 

this idea, in one form or another, runs through the whole 
poem. The narrative consists of three parts: the treachery of 
Ganelon, the pride and loyalty of Roland, the vengeance and 
sorrow of Charles. Clear as crystal, these motives emerge from 
the mass of episode and control the action. Thus the poem has 
an obvious kinship with French Classical tragedy, showing that 
clarity of outline and a sense of proportion are characteristic of 
French literary art from the beginning. 

In the second place, the characters are ideal contrasts. The 
fact that Roland' has the typical epic motive of desmesure 
or " lack of measure " renders the work intensely dramatic. 
When the pagan messengers have spoken, Roland designates 
Ganelon as the return-messenger to Marsile. But Ganelon is 
equal to the part; enraged at his step-son's presumption, he 
singles him out for vengeance. Ganelon is no commonplace 
traitor: he does not directly betray the French; he not only 
(braves Marsile, he defies him, as any follower of Charles would ; 
but he cannot forgive Roland, and in his passion he makes Mar- 
sile believe that the destruction of the rear- guard will destroy 
the French. Again, Oliver, who represents reason, remains 
reasonable to the end. In the eleventh hour his logic tells him 
that Roland is responsible for the French defeat, and in his 
affection for his friend he mingles the cruelty of a reproach, for 
thus his conscience compels him to do. One of the most poign- 
ant scenes in the poem is when Roland and Oliver, in the face 
of death, speak the words of their hearts: 

Qo dist Rodlanz : " Por quei me portez ire ? " 
E cil respont : " Com proz vos lo fei'stes, 
Kar vasselages par sens nen est folie: 
Mielz valt mesure que ne fait estoltie. 
Franceis sont mort par vostre legerie." 

Then Roland said: "Why do you bear me ill?" 

And he replied: "Bravely you fought for us, 

Yet fealty's not courage uncontrolled 

But measure which through madness goes not blind. 

The French are slain : your folly is to blame." 



24 THE MIDDLE AGES AND THE EPIC 

Thus each character is true to his nature; Roland to his un- 
measured prowess, Oliver to his calm, cool reason, Ganelon to 
his insensate hatred, and Charles, most to be pitied of all, to his 
sense of solitary grandeur amid the warring factions of his race. 
To this extent has the poet seen in legend the working out of 
human character and fate — and this is the acme of epic art. 

The style of the Roland is of a piece with its elemental char- 
acter. The thought does not flow, it comes in leaps and bounds, 
or, as Gaston Paris has said, " par une suite d'explosions succes- 
sives, toujours arretees court et toujours reprenant avec 
soudainete." The lyric mood, intensely simple and over- 
powering, dominates the whole; yet separate lyric passages are 
few and generally conventional. Transitions from one episode 
to another are abrupt, as befits their dramatic quality, but this 
again is the abruptness of detail, " like a broken sea with a 
larger wave moving under it." So, too, the language of the 
poem is lapidary; each verse, if possible, is a unit. Metaphors 
are rare; when used they designate an act, as when the dying 
Roland proffers his gauntlet to the angel Gabriel. In short, the 
language is action rather than description; like the trumpet-call 
of Roland it speaks to the ear, since the Roland was to be sung, 
not read. When, however, the poet does depict, as in giving the 
setting, he uses simple, bold strokes. To the pagan messengers 
Charles appears thus: 

Desoz un pin delez un aiglentier 
Un faldestoel i out, fait tot d'ormier, 
La siet li reis ki dolce France tient; 
Blanche at la barbe e tot florit le chief, 
Gent at le cors e lo contenant fier: 
S'est quil demandet nel estoet enseignier. 

Beneath a pine, beside a wild white thorn, 
An armchair stands, inlaid with mother-of-pearl; 
There sits the king who governeth sweet France; 
White is his beard, all hoary is his head; 
Graceful is he and proud his countenance. 
Who asks his name? He needs no pointing out. 

Or if we turn to the background of the battle, the pass above 
Roncevaux, its bleak outlines are revealed in: 

Halt sont li pui e li val tenebros, 
Les roches bises, li destroit merveillos.. 



THE SONG OF ROLAND 25 

High are the hills, the valleys filled with gloom; 
Gray-brown the cliffs, and wonderful the passe§. 

As for the social aspects of the work, these are clearly feudal. 
The characters are " barons," even Turpin, the archbishop, be- 
ing a vassal of Charles. But the feudalism depicted is early, 
reaching back possibly to the tenth century. The Roland is not 
courtois in the sense we defined above. The manners of the 
knights are crude, the tribal or family bond is strong; Roland 
is a typical " sister's son " (a frequent character in primitive 
literature in general, and the Twelve Peers represent an institu- 
tion known as compagnonnage, which hardly extended beyond 
the eleventh century. When not fighting, these paladins of 
France play warlike games; the old men play chess and the 
young men fence or joust: 

E escremissent cil bachelier legier. 

Of the refining influence of women there is scarce a trace. Says 
Oliver to Roland in their final interview: 

" Se puis vedeir ma gente soror Aide, 
Vos ne jerreiz ja mais entre sa brace." 

"If I could see my lovely sister Aide, 

Thou should'st ne'er lie within her arms' embrace." 

And Charles can think of no gentler consolation for the grief- 
stricken Aide than to offer his son Louis as a substitute for 
Roland. Surely the Roland, with its fighting bishops and its 
Valkyrie-like angels, ready to carry the souls of the valiant to 
Paradise, has no place for the sophisticated emotions we asso- 
ciate with a cultivated form of society. 

Thus the Roland is not lacking in art; indeed, technically it 
shows remarkable artistry, as we have seen. But the point of 
view it represents is simple, at times fairly naive; the emotions 
it breathes are elemental, and its plane of life is primitive and 
direct. In this it shows the influence of the Latin works on the 
First Crusade. 

The atmosphere of elemental contrast pervades all except the 
latest forms of epic. In the Pelerinage de Charlemagne a Con- 
stantinople (before 1150) the serious tone of the Roland gives 
way to a spirit of braggadocio and rollicking fun. Incidentally 



26 THE MIDDLE AGES AND THE EPIC 

the work, which is written in twelve-syllable laisses, accounts for 

the presence at Saint-Denis of the relics of the Passion. Charles, 

who wears the crown at Saint-Denis, asks the 

epics Q ueen w h e ther there can be a more impos- 
ing monarch than himself. Rashly she names Hugo of Constan- 
tinople. At once Charles and the Twelve Peers journey to the 
Orient for the purpose of disproving the Queen's assertion. In 
Jerusalem, which they visit first, they occupy the chairs formerly 
used by Christ and the apostles, and the sight of them thus 
seated so overwhelms a Jew that he straightway seeks baptism. 
And in Constantinople, where they linger on the return, the 
relics which they had acquired enable them to execute a series 
of preposterous boasts or gabs. Thus King Hugo, majestic as he 
is, gladly does homage and admits that a Frangais de France is 
no ordinary mortal. The poem epitomizes its particular note 
of vanity in the verse: 

Ja ne vendrons en terre, nostre ne seit li los. 

Never shall we come into a land where renown is not ours. 

The Pelerinage, then, is a popular counterpart to the more in- 
spired Roland; it is a market place epic addressed to the popu- 
lace of a great church fair, the Endit (Lat. indictum) of Saint- 
Denis, near Paris, and it aims to amuse rather than to uplift. 

But, in general, the epic muse is tragic, " reiterating and re- 
inforcing the heroic motives," and glorifying France and the 
Second church. This can be seen in the second or William 

Group of Orange cycle, the central theme of which is the 

exaltation of Christianity: essaucier la sainte crestiente. Linked 
to this motive is the idea of loyalty to the Carolingian dynasty, 
tottering to its fall in the successors of Charles. For instance, 
the Couronnement de Louis (about 1130) shows us William 
hastening to the aid of Charles' son, Louis, who is too timid to 
grasp the reins of power single-handed. William takes the feeble 
King under his protection, kills off the usurpers and marries 
Louis to his own sister. Yet Louis, characteristically weak, is 
ungrateful : 

En grant barnage fu Loois entrez; 
Quant il fu riches, Guillelme n'en sot gre. 

In great domain had Louis been installed; 
When he was strong, to William he bore no love. 



OTHER EPICS 27 

Again, in the Aliscans (close to 1150) the Saracen host is vic- 
torious and the battle-field is strewn with Christian dead (a 
fiction suggested by the Graeco-Roman cemetery at Aries). 
William, who despite his heroism is unable to rescue his favorite 
nephew, Vivien, is forced to seek refuge at Orange, where 
Guiborc, his wife, fails to recognize him, partly because she 
cannot believe that William would have fled. On hearing of 
the slaughter of all his companions, she persuades him to 
seek the King's aid at Saint-Denis. At first the latter turns 
a deaf ear to his appeal, until cowed by William's wrath 
Louis finally yields, as he always does, and sends assistance. 
William's final victory is due to the help of a burlesque 
creature, Renouart — the Morgante of the French epic — and 
the second half of the work is a mock heroic, in which the in- 
spiration flags. The story of William survives also in an early 
form, the Changun de Guillelme — which some scholars place 
above the Roland in merit. This is rather the " draft of an 
epic," interesting because of its vigor and primitive traits, but 
hardly the literary equal of the chansons proper. 

The third division of the epic, the cycle of Doon de Mayence, 
deals with the feuds between the great barons and the crown, 
Third anc ^ is rich in the delineation of character. Excel- 

Group lent examples are Raoul de Cambrai and Girard de 

Roussillon (extant in versions composed after 1150). 

A " sister's son " like Roland, Raoul has strong attachments 
to his imperial uncle. But Louis, unlike Charlemagne, for- 
sakes his nephew's cause. Grown to manhood, Raoul is driven 
to demand of Louis his just inheritance. Louis promises and 
then wavers in favor of another. This act of perfidy so in- 
furiates the hero that he destroys the town of Origini and its 
cloister of nuns, although in true medieval fashion he refuses 
to eat meat on Friday. Among the innocents who perish is 
the mother of Bernier, the " boon companion " of Raoul. Ber- 
nier breaks his bond of companionship in order to kill Raoul, 
and the vendetta that ensues between the families of the two 
heroes lasts for years. Finally a reconciliation is effected, in 
which the King also pays a forfeit. In mere force of conception 
this story is perhaps unique among the chansons de geste. Al- 
though it fails to depict any imaginative passion, it is supremely 



28 THE MIDDLE AGES AND THE EPIC 

tragic in its realism and the barbaric truthfulness of its utter- 
ance. The character of Bernier, " dull, expostulatory, help- 
less," is an excellent example of the hero marked by fate. 

The church and the pilgrimage routes again play a role in 
Girard de Roussillon. Here the strife is between Charles the 
Bald and his most powerful vassal in the east, for Rous- 
sillon is placed by the poet near Vezelay, famous for its shrine 
of Mary Magdalen. Charles and Girard had married sisters, 
but Charles' wife was once the betrothed of Girard, who had 
yielded her to his liege as an act of fealty, in return for which 
service the King gave Girard certain property rights. These 
Charles violates, and a long and bitter struggle follows. In 
the end Charles triumphs, Roussillon is razed to the ground, 
and Girard and his faithful wife flee into the forest of the Ar- 
dennes. Through the influence of a hermit, Girard now re- 
nounces the world and becomes a charcoal-burner, while 
Bertha, his wife, earns a pittance by sewing. But the sight 
of her husband's degradation moves Bertha to appeal to the 
Queen, and a reconciliation with Charles is brought about. 
Once more Girarcl's wrath (his desmesum) flares up and he 
holds the King at bay. At last, however, his proud spirit is 
broken, and both he and Bertha devote the remainder of their 
lives to building churches (Vezelay and Pothieres), in honor 
of her who at Bethany washed the Saviour's feet. Here we 
see clearly the process whereby chronicle-history, saint's legend 
and monastic foundation combine to produce a literary work 
of enduring human interest. The Girard de Roussillon is typi- 
cal of the composition of many a French epic, and the ecclesi- 
astical and feudal ideas on which it rests are on the whole the 
controlling ideas of the first half of the twelfth century, when 
king and baron, castle and monastery, were struggling with one 
another for the possession of the land. 

Out of the welter of this striving the great cultural up- 
heaval of the second half of the century was to come. Mon- 
astic schools and feudal castles arose on every hand. Polite 
society took form in definite molds. Women began to play a 
part in the affairs of state and gave tone to the ideals of which 
they themselves were the object. The new era is still war- 
like, yet war is no longer an opposition of popular forces, 



OTHER EPICS 29 

the conflict of rival clans, but a social game, waged according 
to fixed rules: those of chivalry. In this period epic desmesure 
or " excess of character " is no longer the inspiration of narra- 
tive. The heroic gives place to the sentimental and adventur- 
ous ; and gradually epic poetry dies out or becomes merged with 
a new genre, the " romance." Thus Huon de Bordeaux (about 
1220), with its main theme of the story of Oberon, is an 
example of the heroic followed by the purely fanciful or 
magical; whereas Aiol (before 1250) transfuses an epic back- 
ground with romantic motifs and a vein of real humor. 
Finally, after 1250, heroic motivation disappears altogether, 
and the chansons de geste translated into prose become a part 
of the romantic narrative lore of Europe. 



CHAPTER II 
THE LYRIC AND THE ROMANCE 

As the epic was set to music and sung, so also there were in 
twelfth-century France songs of personal or " lyric " inspiration. 
An essential feature of these songs is that originally they were 
written as accompaniments to the dance (la carole), so that 
" the leader would sing the successive lines, while the rest of 
the dancers holding hands all joined in the refrain." Of this 
custom our modern May-dances, with the crowning of the May 
Queen, are a survival. In the Middle Ages, however, such 
festive gatherings were popular in a wide sense, ana lyric songs 
set to the dance were the diversion of castle and bower fully 
as much as of the people. In principle, then, we may say that 
the lyric originates with the folk — provided we bear in mind 
that the individual poet or singer (the jongleur) was capable 
of using it for his own ends and of infusing it with a spirit that 
was anything but popular. A dividing line is hard to draw; 
and the term " folk-poetry " often implies no more than that 
the particular lyric deals with traditional themes, dating from 
a time when there was no formal division between polite society 
and the people as such. 

At the same time, the Old French lyric undoubtedly owes 
more to the influence of Latin models than has commonly been 
admitted. Such an influence would be especially strong in the 
south of France, where the juxtaposition of springtide, the 
nightingale and love is a recurrent feature of Latin verse. Ob- 
serve, as an example, the last quatrain of a Latin song (eleventh 
century) from one of the manuscripts of St. MartiaPs at 
Limoges: 

Jam nix glaciesque liquescit, 
Folium et herba virescit, 
Philomela jam cantat in alto, 
Ardet amor cordis in antro. 

30 



LYRIC POETRY 31 

Now are melted ice and snow, 
Trees and grass their verdure show, 
Philomela sings on high, 
Loving hearts burn secretly. 

Thus there arise two classes of twelfth- century French lyrics: 
those in which the emotion is presented objectively as part of 
a popular dramatic setting; and those in which a fixed subjec- 
tive experience determines the burden and the form of the song. 

The first class embraces the northern French types: the chan- 
son a toile or d'histoire, the reverdie, the chanson de mal mariee 
Northern and the P a stourelle. As a rule, these are indepen- 
Types dent of southern, Provengal influence. While often 

intended for sophisticated audiences, they betray their popular 
origin by the use of dance refrains, and they are addressed to 
society at large, without any expressed distinction of caste. 
Their form is narrative, the love experience being told as a 
story. 

Thus the chanson a toile is virtually a ballad, a spinning or 
weaving song adapted to w T omen at their work. The theme is 
a maiden's love for a knight, Doette's for Doon, Gaiette's for 
Gerard, Eremborc's for Renald — notice the alliteration of 
names — and the whole is presented as a kind of miniature 
drama in stanzas of ten-syllable lines, ending in a refrain of 
one, two or three shorter verses. The beginning of La belle 
Doette may be regarded as typical: 

Bele Doette as fenestres se siet, 
Lit en un livre, mais au cuer ne Ten tient; 
De son ami Doon li ressovient 
Qu'en autres terres est alez tornoier, 
E or en ai dol. 

Fair Doette at the casement sat, 
Read in a book, but in her heart is sad; 
To Doon her thoughts turn back 
Who's gone away to fight, alack! 
How sorrowful am I. 

Closer to the dance in movement are the reverdies and the 
chansons de mal mariee. The former, as the title indicates, 
have reference to the spring-tide, the season of love and joy; 



32 THE LYRIC AND THE ROMANCE 

whereas the latter, pungent and cynical in tone, embody the 
lament of those wedded unhappily. Here, as elsewhere in this 
early work, the protagonist is a woman — who in the chansons 
de mat mariee usually consoles herself by taking a lover. 

With the pastourelle we approach a type more complicated 
indeed but having considerable inherent charm. It has, more- 
over, a corresponding southern form in the Provengal pastorela 
or pastor eta. The name refers to the " shepherdess " whose graces 
the poem celebrates. But again the popular origin is remote, 
since the extant pastourelles all have an aristocratic tinge. 
The poet, generally a knight, while riding through the country 
meets a shepherdess whose love he implores. When she re- 
mains obdurate to his entreaties, it is because Marion — the 
name of the rustic belle — wishes to remain true to Robin or 
Perrin or Guiot; indeed, the latter at times comes to her rescue 
and attacks the importunate nobleman, frequently to the re- 
gret of the girl. A typical setting is the following, though 
most pastourelles have a more involved stanza form: 

L'autrier me chevalchoie 
Toute ma senturelle, 
Trovai en mei ma voie 
Cortoise pastourelle; 
Lou cors ait bel et avenant, 

La color vermeillete. 
Ausi tost come je la vi, 

E je li prix a faire. 

As I rode forth the other day, 

I found, what would you guess? 

Upon the winding country-way 

A charming shepherdess. 

Her shapely form brought joy to me, 

Her glowing color too; 

And stopping there, her close to see, 

I straightway 'gan to woo. 

The knight wins his suit. Despite the fear of her relatives the 
lady succumbs to his beau parler and forgets her rustic Robin 
in the arms of the new lover. The delightful Jeu de Robin et 
Marion by Adam de la Halle (thirteenth century) dramatizes 
the main situation of the pastourelle. 



LYRIC POETRY 33 

By degrees, and almost simultaneously with the objective 
lyric, a new spirit manifests itself. In 1150, signs of a great 
Southern cultural change are everywhere evident. The rise 
Types of chivalry, noted above (Ch. I), and the develop- 

ment of a cour-tois state of society, attended by the growth of 
great school centers like Le Bee, Chartres and Paris, and en- 
couraged, along artistic lines, by the rivalry of the courts of 
Champagne, Blois, Flanders and England — all of this gave to 
the new age a distinction second only to that of the later Renais- 
sance. The century which follows, the thirteenth, represents 
the florescence of the Middle Ages, in many ways as complete an 
expression of the French national genius as the Classical age of 
Louis XIV. 

The quickening impulse came from the region associated 
with Provengal or the langue d'oc, whose dominion had reached 
as far north as Poitou. From Poitou came William IX (1087- 
1127), the earliest known trobador (the Provencal form for 
trouvere, meaning " poet ") and the grandfather of the light- 
hearted Eleanor, successively queen of Louis VII of France and 
Henry II of England, and mother of Marie of Champagne and 
Alice of Blois. Thus the avenue northward was established, 
and the Provengal lyric was the literary baggage of the poets 
who travelled over it: in the suite of Eleanor, the troubadours 
Bernart de Ventadorn and Bertran de Born, and in that of 
Marie, Rigaud de Barbezieux. But these noble ladies were 
themselves adepts in the gai saber, as the new poetic art was 
called; and Marie herself suggested topics to Crestien de Troyes 
(see below), while in her behalf Andre le Chapelain (Andreas 
Capellanus) wrote the new Ovid of the age, the Tractatus 
Amoris or De Amove. 

In this way the subjective lyric was a poetry of " art " in our 
modern sense of the word. Its point of departure is the identi- 
fication of love and religion: Omnia vincit amor. Only in place 
of the purely sensuous ideal of antiquity, the Provengal lover 
mingled with the reactions of sense the conviction of the un- 
attainable, and like the mystic before his God he humbled him- 
self before his lady. The result was a philosophical interpre- 
tation of love as the sovereign or infinite good, and the 
development of a system whereby the lover became the perfect 



34 THE LYRIC AND THE ROMANCE 

worshipper of his unattainable mistress. This system had its 
precepts, its laws, its remedies — in a word, its code — complex 
in the extreme and administered by Love, whom Dante called 
" the Lord of Terrible Aspect." 

With such an ideal, poetry becomes subtilized and thoroughly 
conventional. Conceits and euphuisms abound. Every natural 
note is banished as dishonorable and vulgar, or vilain. The 
true courtois glows only with an illicit passion, for love and 
marriage are regarded as inimical. On the other hand, the gain 
in poetic expression is considerable. The psychology of emotion 
is worked out in detail and with some variety; and it is note- 
worthy that the emotion depicted is not without a real back- 
ground in aristocratic circles, for the Provencal lyric is not of 
the people. But the greatest triumph of the new genre was in 
artistic form, and the best known varieties of Provencal verse 
were adopted almost without a change by the rest of cultured 
Europe. The German Minnesong is largely an importation 
from Provence. 

Of the southern forms which found favor in French the most 
popular are: the chanson (Prov. canson), the tenson (Prov. ten- 
son) and the jeu-parti (Prov. joe partit) . The first of these is a 
lyric of five or six stanzas, usually with the rime-scheme abab- 
baba, and ending in a half stanza, called envoi (Prov. tornado) , 
in which the poet draws his conclusions and apostrophizes his 
lady or his patron. The themes of the chanson vary, some being 
suggested by the crusades. Thus Conon de Bethune (1180), 
who was a well known trouvere and also a crusader, begins one 
of his chansons as follows: 

Ahi, amors, com dure departie 

Me covient faire a perdre la millor, 

Qui onques fust amee ne servie! 

Deus me ramainst a li par sa dolgor, 

Si voirement com j'en part a dolor! 

Deus! qu'ai-je dit? ja ne m'en part je mie: 

Se li cors va servir Nostre Signor, 

Toz li miens cuers remaint en sa baillie. 

Oh, Love! how hard it is to sever 
Myself from her whose sweet embrace 
I fondly woo, forsaking never: 
God bring me back, I beg this grace 



LYRIC POETRY 35 

As truly as I part in sorrow. 
What did I say? I do not part: 
My body serves the Lord tomorrow, 
But with my love remains my heart! 

Gracefully as it is used here, this conceit of the wandering body 
(cors) and the captive heart (cuers) is characteristic of courtly 
literature, and shows how easy it was for the poet to glide from 
the facts of life into the subtleties of the mind and turn art into 
rhetoric. 

The acme of this tendency is reached in the tenson and the 
jeu parti. These are debates or contests in verse on some prob- 
lem of love casuistry; such as, should a lover prefer the mar- 
riage or the death of his beloved? which lover has the greater 
chance, one who is blind, or one who is deaf and dumb? In 
form these types resemble the chanson, except that in the tenson 
different persons, feigned or real, sing alternate stanzas, while 
in the jeu parti one poet offers to another the alternate side of 
a debate. Here poetry degenerates and becomes a foster child of 
scholasticism, with which these types are contemporary. Gace 
Brule, Thibaut de Navarre (the royal lover of Blanche of Cas- 
tille), and the Chatelain de Coucy (in legend the lover of the 
Dame de Fayel), are among those who plied this difficult art. 
Their game was to toy with ideas, and in them we have the fore- 
runners of the preciosity and Petrarchizing of a later day. 

Fortunately not all of the courtly poetry moved in these arti- 
ficial channels, nor was lyric expression henceforth confined 
Other Lyric *° courtois circles. For poetry is ever ready to 
Types draw on popular sources, just as the people are will- 

ing to adopt courtly forms and modify them. Thus the aube 
(Prov. alba) or " morning song " maintains the externals of a 
set type with some freedom of expression, so that the situation 
it embodies is still apparent in Romeo and Juliet: 

"Wilt thou be gone? it is not yet near day: 
It was the nightingale and not the lark, 
That pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear: 
Nightly she sings on yon pomegranate tree: 
Believe me, love, it was the nightingale." 

More varied in form than its Provengal model is the salut 
d'amour, a verse epistle, beginning with a greeting to the lady 



36 THE LYRIC AND THE ROMANCE 

for whom the poet writes. An adept in this type was the cele- 
brated Philippe de Beaumanoir (1250), known widely for his 
code of laws, the Coutumes du Beauvaisis. Other measures, 
like the motet, descort and lai lyrique are musical in origin, 
deriving from the sequences of the church, although the lai 
lyrique, which had a notable practitioner in Colin Muset, a 
jongleur who moved in the courtly world (thirteenth century), 
may have arisen from the musical accompaniment of the Breton 
contes (see p. 52). 

Finally, a freer spirit breathes in those forms which, while 
based once more on popular dance refrains, later become courtly 
in tone. Such are the rondels, from which the more modern 
triolet and rondeau descend; and especially the ballete, subse- 
quently known by the name ballade. The rondeau remains 
essentially a one-strophe composition, while the ballade consists 
of three strophes having the same rimes and ending in the same 
refrain), to which there was later added an envoi. With the 
rise of the literary guilds or puys (from the Latin podium or 
" hill ") in Arras and other northern cities, the ballade and the 
rondeau become the dominant lyric forms, especially in the 
hands of the fourteenth-century poets, Guillaume de Machaut 
and Eustache Deschamps (see Bk. II, Ch. 1). And so they re- 
main until displaced, in the Renaissance, by the sonnet. In 
them the characteristic grace of French verse appears anew, 
and there is something almost national in the suspensive phras- 
ing in which these forms excel. A modern triolet by Austin 
Dobson reproduces this quality well: 

I intended an ode 

But it turned into triolets, 
It began a la mode, 
I intended an ode; 
But Rose crossed the road, 

With a bunch of fresh violets. 
I intended an ode 

But it turned into triolets. 

From the courtly lyric it is but a short step to the lyricism 
of narrative. The courtois ladies who were enamored of the 
The Rise of art of Provence also reacted to the wonder of the 
the Romance Orient, now made accessible by the crusades, and 
to the tales of marvels and enchantments the crusaders brought 



ORIGINS OF FICTION 37 

back to France. It was with a new interest that they heard 
the legend of Troy, the adventures of Aeneas, and all that an- 
cient story had made illustrious. Thus by degrees the past 
seemed contemporaneous and actual, and a genuine renascence 
set in — in which, however, antiquity was dressed up in chival- 
tic garb. Hector became a knight in medieval armor, Alexan- 
der a princely patron — incidentally the symbol of largesse or 
bounty — and Troilus a fate-stricken lover. Above all, and 
here the courtois spirit is obvious, the women of the past as- 
sumed a new value, and to be matchless like Helen, tragic like 
Dido, or bewitching like Medea, was the aim of most twelfth- 
century heroines. 

The monasteries play an important part in this innovation. 
Here, according to the method of exegesis outlined in Chapter 
I, the past was exploited as to its sensus or " meaning "; and as 
culture became secular, and the clerks depended more and more 
on the favor of the great, they drew from their manuscripts ever 
fresh examples of worldly fame and grandeur. In this proc- 
ess not only the Aeneid but also Statius' Thebaid, Lucan's Phar- 
salia, and especially Ovid's Metamorphoses and Heroides were 
laid under contribution. But the monks studied other works of a 
more doubtful origin as well. Owing to their ignorance of Greek, 
Homer was practically unknown except as a name; and so they 
took their account of Troy from Latin versions of Dares Phry- 
gius and Dictys Cretensis, erroneously reputed to have been eye- 
witnesses of Ilion's fall. For the monks were themselves com- 
pilers, and any authority with the sanction of age was accepted 
as reliable. With the help of this material they then fashioned 
the instruments of a new narrative style. Incidents were elabo- 
rated by the use of metaphor and hyperbole. Physical traits 
are " catalogued " as preliminary to character drawing. But 
particularly, the eight-syllable couplet, with its tendency to 
" overflow," replaces the ten-syllable line as a vehicle of expres- 
sion, and poetry gains almost the freedom of prose. The result 
is that by the year 1160 a whole literature "drawn from the 
Latin," as the phrase is, begins to appear in the vernacular. And 
to this literature, irrespective of its derivation, the name roman 
or Romance (from the fact that it is translated from Latin into a 
Romance tongue) is attached. It is this form which gradually 



38 THE LYRIC AND THE ROMANCE 

assumes the function of a distinct genre, independent of any 
Latin origin, and becomes the prototype of our modern " novel." 

The Middle Ages classified its narrative literature under the 
head of matter e, according to its derivation. There was the 
Types of Matter of France or the National Epic, which we 
Romances treated in Chapter I; the Matter of Rome, deriving 
from classical and pseudo-classical sources; and the Matter of 
Britain or what we call today the Arthurian romances. Differ 
as they may in derivation, the last two divisions show very much 
the same method (sens) of narrative treatment. 

Chief among the works of the Matter of Rome are the Alex- 
andre, the Thebes, the Eneas and the Troie. 

The life of the great Alexander, always the beau ideal of gen- 
erosity to the Middle Ages, is the theme of the first work men- 
The Matter ^ioned. It survives in three forms, of which the 
of Rome earliest (about 1100) is a fragment, in monorime 
laisses, by a certain Alberic de Besangon or Briangon. Written 
near the Provencal border, this version incorporates the idea, 
attributed to Solomon, that " all is vanity," which it applies to 
the career of the hero. The second or ten-syllable version, by 
a poet from Poitou (twelfth century), has been praised for its 
style; whereas the last or French form proper (1177) is the 
work of three poets from the vicinity of Paris and employs the 
twelve-syllable line, whence the well-known vers alexandrins of 
French Classical poetry. This finished form makes a strong 
appeal to the reader's love of the fanciful: Alexander's cam- 
paigns become the exploits of an adventurous knight-errant; 
strange animals and amphibious men beset his path, he visits 
Valleys from which None Return, he and his hosts are rejuve- 
nated in a Fountain of Youth, and speaking trees foretell his 
doom. For all this the authors had Latin sources, derived 
ultimately from a Greek romance, by a certain Callisthenes, 
written in Alexandria, Egypt (about a.d. 200). But it is they 
who popularize the work as the Wonder-book of the East by 
reason of their spirited style and their richly flowing narrative. 

The Thebes (after 1150), is the medieval interpretation of 
the legend of Oedipus, as its derivation from Statius would imply. 
Formally it differs from the Alexandre by being written in eight- 
syllable couplets; but in spirit the work is still close to the 



THE MATTER OF ROME 39 

chansons de geste. Accordingly, the fate of Oedipus is con- 
ceived as epic desmesure, and while the grief of Jocasta and her 
maidens is graphically depicted — when they learn the terrible 
truth of Oedipus' crime — the position of woman in this ro- 
mance is still subordinate to that of man. This last feature of 
exalting woman becomes the distinctive trait of the Eneas and 
to a greater degree of the Troie. 

In the Eneas (probably later than the Thebes) the courtois 
element manifests itself in the handling of the source. Im- 
agine an Aeneid with the founding of Rome all but forgotten. 
In the six thousand lines of the Old French poem, the hero does 
little else but circle about Dido and Lavinia, as the moth plays 
about the flame ; through Dido he becomes uxorious and neglect- 
ful of chivalry, and through Lavinia, more skilled in the artifices 
of love, he regains his prowess and accomplishes the high em- 
prise of defeating Turnus — and, incidentally, of founding 
Rome. This emphasis on the " love-sickness " of Aeneas made 
the work popular with other romancers and also shows the 
growing influence of Ovid on the narrative literature of the 
time. Although the language of the Eneas is often shockingly 
unrefined, the style is marked by the deft and vivid handling 
of dialogue — a notable innovation. 

Finally, with the appearance (about 1165) of the Roman de 
Troie by Benoit de Sainte-More, the Matter of Rome loses its 
anonymity and scores its most lasting success. Benoit, a younger 
contemporary of the poet Wace (see below) — whom he replaced 
in the favor of Henry II of England — wrote his poem of 
thirty thousand verses in honor of Eleanor of Poitou. For this 
expansion of the Troy theme his sources, Dares and Dictys, fur- 
nished only the background and the main characters; medieval 
elaboration, largely by Benoit himself, furnished the rest. Thus 
the fall of Troy becomes a typical twelfth-century military 
exploit, with knights in armor and ladies in castles and bowers, 
and behind it all the trials and tribulations of courtly lovers. 
A prominent position among the latter is given to the un- 
Homeric Troilus and the lady of his dreams, the lovely Briseida 
(later Cressida) . As Professor Saintsbury justly says, " Helen 
was too puzzling, as well as too Greek; Andromache only a 
faithful wife; Cassandra a scolding sorceress; Polyxena a 



40 THE LYRIC AND THE ROMANCE 

victim " ; whereas Briseida had a fairly clear record'. Benoit 
undoubtedly has his longueurs, but he knew his public and he 
did for the Middle Ages what Virgil had done so majestically 
for imperial Rome: he gave feudal society an ancestry in the 
halls of Ilion. In some respects he did not himself harvest the 
full reward of his achievement. His romance was put into 
Latin by an Italian, Guido delle Colonne, and in this later form 
was diffused all over Europe. In this general way it became the 
source of Boccaccio and then of Chaucer, whose Troilus is one 
of the masterpieces of medieval English fiction: 

In which ye may the double sorwes here, 

Of Troylus, in loving of Criseyde, 

And how that she forsook him er she deyde. 

Benoit lacks the insight of this prince of story-tellers; indeed, 
he has a mere suggestion of Chaucer's masterly conception of 
Criseyde as a character. Yet his narrative has both flow and 
charm, and Benoit is not without a sense of the picturesque. 
As late as the sixteenth century it was the medieval concept of 
Troy that inspired Jean Lemaire de Beiges, from whose version 
Ronsard drew material for the Franciade. 

The Norman Conquest (1066) had brought the French into 
contact with Celtic stories: in England through Wales and 
The Matter Cornwall, and on the continent through Armorica 
of Britain or Brittany — for there were Breton knights in the 
army with which William conquered England. It would not 
repay us to discuss whether the Matter of Britain came into 
French literature by the one or the other channel. Suffice it to 
say that both were open, and that commerce, and therefore liter- 
ature, could travel over either route. Moreover, the rich litera- 
ture of ancient Ireland contains many a parallel to Arthurian 
material, and Irish monks were frequent visitors to England, as 
they had been to continental Europe. But the spread of Celtic 
stories was undoubtedly facilitated by the Breton conteurs, who. 
to a musical accompaniment on the " rote " or the harp told 
their tales (see below, the lais) in the French court circles. Much 
of this material was of a folklore character. Thus the romantic 
fancy of the Celts is brought into contact with the artistic ideals 
of Provence and the storied memories of antiquity. 



THE MATTER OF BRITAIN 41 

The fountain-head for the history of King Arthur is the His- 
toria regum Britanniae (1136) by the Welsh monk, Geoffrey of 
Geoffrey of Monmouth. Written in Latin, this work furnishes a 
Monmouth parallel to the classical sources mentioned above. 
As the title states, the Historia is an account of the kings of 
Britain, with whose lineage Geoffrey wishes to link the Nor- 
man regime. But he deals with his subject romantically — 
in the spirit of his times. He traces the genealogy of the kings 
back to Troy through a certain Brutus (eponymic of Britain), 
grandson of Aeneas, and he elaborates Arthur's career with the 
aid of oral and written tradition; so that Arthur appears as the 
exemplar of chivalry, the courtois British counterpart of the 
French Charlemagne. In general, the story is the one familiar 
to us from the paraphrase of Sir Thomas Malory and the Idylls 
of Tennyson. But Geoffrey does not mention the Round Table, 
Mordred — not Lancelot — is the lover of Guinevere, and no 
reference is made to Tristan or to the Holy Grail. On the other 
hand, Arthur himself is still a " leader in battles," and his court 
at Caerleon-on-Usk is a center of " politeness, which people of 
other countries thought worthy of imitation " — thus speaks the 
Welshman in Geoffrey. Most interesting of all, for its influence 
on the romances, is the idea that " love " inspires " knighthood." 
This is the crux of a discussion ending in the conclusion that 
" the women of Arthur's court esteem none worthy of their love 
who have not given proof of their valor in three days' battle." 

To Geoffrey is also attributed a Vita Merlini, written probably 
in 1148. In 1155 the Historia was put into French verse by the 
Norman poet Wace. In this somewhat elaborated form, known 
as the Roman de Brut, — Wace adds an account of the Round 
Table — it became the framework for later Arthurian story. 

The legend of Tristan is one of the greatest tragedies of love 
in literature. Here the Celtic " magic " has wrought a com- 
The " Estoire bination of human passion, primitive adventure and 
de Tristan" custom, which is unique in French romance. As 
Gaston Paris has said: 

Qui aurait pu, en dehors des Bretons de Cambrie, de Cornouailles 
ou d'Armorique, concevoir ce theatre multiple et y derouler libre- 
ment les episodes du vaste drame? 



42 THE LYRIC AND THE ROMANCE 

Unlike the story of Arthur, the Tristan romances apparently 
come straight from the vernacular. The lost Estoire to which 
the extant versions refer was presumably written in England, 
in Norman French. This work told of Tristan's expedition 
to Ireland to fetch the blond-haired Isolt for his maternal 
uncle, King Mark of Cornwall. One need hardly recall how by a 
fatal mistake Tristan drains with Isolt the " love-philter " in- 
tended for the bridal pair ; how Tristan, stung by repentance on 
account of his passion for his uncle's lawful wife, again and again 
endeavors to renounce Isolt; how in fact he flees to Brittany and 
marries a second Isolt, her of the White Hands; and how, 
deceived by the false report that the boat which was to bring 
the true Isolt from Cornwall carries a black sail- (instead of 
a white one, as he had hoped) , Tristan falls dead. All this is 
familiar to most modern readers. 

But Beroul, who came from Brittany, and Thomas, who wrote 
in England (about 1165), dealt with the story in the manner 
of their contemporaries. In particular, they represent the two 
forms which the legend takes with subsequent writers. Beroul 
still clings to primitive traits, such as Mark's Midas-like ears, 
concealed under a cap; the cunning of the dwarf Frocin, who 
reveals Tristan's guilt to Mark; Tristan's leap to freedom from 
the chapel window at Tintagel, and Isolt — called by the older 
form Iselt — handed over to a band of lepers. Nevertheless, 
he shows insight into character and a subtle sense of humor, and 
he connects the legend with Arthur, from whom the Tristan was 
originally quite distinct. On the other hand, Thomas moves in 
another world. He does not narrate, he psychologizes on the 
basis of a narrative already familiar. He dwells on the gene- 
alogy of his hero as a knight of Brittany; in true scholastic 
fashion he treats Tristan's desir (which binds him to Isolt) and 
his volonte (which tears him from her), and he develops the 
conceit of Isolt's cuers, which is Tristan's, and her cors, which 
to his and her shame Tristan shares with Mark. Thus he lays 
the foundation for a theme popular in his day, the menage a 
trois, and his work foreshadows that of his great contemporary, 
Crestien de Troyes. But Thomas was also a poet. He pene- 
trates the tragedy of Mark's life, and his lyricism appears in 
lines like: 



CRESTIEN DE TROYES 43 

"Iseut ma drue, Iseut m'amie, 
En vus ma mort, en vus ma vie! " 

addressed by Tristan to Isolt after drinking the love-philter and 
symbolizing the triumph of love over death. 

In Germany, the version according to Beroul was the source 
of a long poem by Eilhart von Oberge (1190-1200), whereas 
Thomas was the model for the more poetic work of Gottfried 
von Strassburg (about 1200). In France, a later Prose Tristan, 
taken from a source perhaps independent of the other versions, 
was also popular. Finally, the story according to Thomas was 
current in Old Norse (in 1226) and served as a source for the 
English strophic poem, Sir Tristan (between 1294 and 1300). 
From all these sources, and from the so-called Folie Tristan 
— wherein Tristan appears disguised as a " fool " — Professor 
Bedier has reconstructed the tale in Modern French. 

With such models as a guide, the Romance enters upon a fruit- 
ful career. To " read " romances now became the fashion, and 
Crestien ^ n * s inevitably led to an improvement, in technique 

de Troyes and to the evolution of a fixed form. In this con- 
nection Crestien de Troyes is of supreme importance. Says 
Gaston Paris: 

On pourrait citer tel morceau de Chretien de Troyes qui ne le 
cede pas en verite, en ingeniosite, parfois en subtilite, aux plus 
celebres monologues de nos tragedies, aux pages les plus fouillees de 
nos romans contemporains. 

This is perhaps- high praise for one who still lacks the full- 
ness, of life, whose plots are often imperfect and wearisome, 
and whose style, clear as it is, in places seems affected and 
trifling. But his age thought otherwise and accorded him 
the greatest honor. 

Of Crestien's life we know next to nothing. As he hailed from 
Troyes and wrote in a dialect which shows many local traits, 
he evidently was in contact with the aristocratic circles that 
surrounded Marie of Champagne. It was she who gave him 
the matiere and the sens of one of his romances, while Philip 
of Alsace (before 1191) — better known as ruler of Flanders — 
provided him with the source for another. At one time he may 
have resided at Beauvais, from the cathedral library of which 



44 THE LYRIC AND THE ROMANCE 

he derived the source of his Cliges, Beyond this we have no 
facts, and it is idle to speculate on his station in life. But he 
was well educated and he glories in clergie, which, he declares, 
is now domiciled in France: 

Par les livres que nos avons 

Les fez des anciens savons 
Et del siecle qui fu jadis. 

His point of view is courtly ; in fact, in the I vain he prefers un 
cortois mort to un vilain vif. Nevertheless, he was an observer 
and a psychologist, and he makes distinctions. Love and mar- 
riage are not necessarily inimical but can be reconciled — this 
is his great thesis. The only work which controverts this idea 
is precisely the work for which Marie of Champagne gave him 
the theme, and this romance Crestien did not complete. 

In addition to his translations from Ovid (one of which may 
be the Philomela, attributed to him by some scholars) and a 
lost poem on King Mark and Isolt, Crestien wrote five romances, 
possibly six, in case the Guillaume d'Angleterre, a somewhat 
colorless version of the legend of St. Eustace, is really by 
him. These five all center more or less about the court of 
Arthur and, with the exception of the Cliges, belong to the Mat- 
ter of Britain. 

The Erec, which is still close to the older epic in style, brings 
up at once the conflict between chivalry and love. Can Erec 
be a lover and also an active knight? Can Enid be an amie 
and also a dutiful and long-suffering femmef So Crestien 
would have it. After the adventures in which Erec, avenging 
an insult to Guinevere, wins the matchless Enid, he falls a prey 
to sloth and in his uxoriousness neglects his knighthood. As 
Tennyson says in the idyll drawn from the Welsh version of this 
story, the hero became 

Forgetful of the tilt and tournament, 
Forgetful of his glory and his name, 
Forgetful of his princedom and its cares. 

It is on this account that Enid weeps and, weeping over her 
sleeping lord, rouses him to his sovereignty as a knight and a 
husband — for the second part of the romance is one long peril- 
ous adventure, in which Enid's part is to play the role of a 



CRESTIEN DE TROYES 45 

Griselda. But all's well that ends well, and the romance closes 
with the crowning of the reconciled pair at Nantes in Brittany, 
attended by the entire Arthurian court. The " matter " out of 
which this story is constructed is thoroughly romantic: Erec 
originally wins Enid as the prize of a " sparrow-hawk contest " ; 
Arthur and his knights go on a hunt for a mysterious " white 
stag " ; Erec destroys the enchantment of a " magic garden " 
in which his opponent, Mabonograin, leads a charmed life. All 
these incidents bear the impress of an original fairy tale, Celtic 
at least in concept, and recalling in the garden episode the Irish 
Otherworld into which heroes were thought to stray when lured 
by love and adventure. 

With the Cliges the poet comes closer to the polite world. 
An Eastern story connected with the legend of Solomon's wife, 
the Cliges becomes in Crestien's hands a remodeled Tristan, in 
which the heroine's virtue is saved by a trick practiced on Cliges' 
usurping uncle. Thus does Crestien gratify courtois sophistry 
and please the fashionable people of his day, who took delight in 
the thought that an Athenian Greek should go to Arthur's court, 
and who liked the Ovidian sentiments which the characters 
express. The heroine, Fenice, is a typical young rusee, the an- 
cestor of the Anges and Celimenes of a later day. What saves 
the romance from the taint of the unnatural is its occasional 
appeal to real sentiment, as in the lines reechoing the Erec: 

De s'amie a feite sa fame, 
Mes il l'apele amie et dame, 
Ne por ce ne pert ele mie, 
Que il ne Taint come s'amie 1 

The sophisticated Cliges was followed by the still more arti- 
ficial Lancelot or, to use the correct title, the Chevalier de la char- 
rete, for Crestien now affects the pseudonym for his heroes. The 
background of the story is the abduction of Guinevere to the 
Otherworld and her rescue by Lancelot — a Celtic theme similar 
to the Persephone myth. But Marie of Champagne obviously 
influenced the poet to subordinate the plot to the Provencal 

1 Compare the words of Chaucer in the Franklin's Tale: 
Sith he hathe bothe his lady and his love, 
His lady, certes, and his wyf also, 
The which that lawe of love accordeth to. 



46 THE LYRIC AND THE ROMANCE 

conception of love. Thus Lancelot — whose relationship to the 
Lady of the Lake is barely mentioned — rides in a very un- 
chivalric cart and otherwise lowers himself by playing the 
coward in a three days' tournament (see Geoffrey of Mon- 
mouth), all for the sake of Guinevere's illicit love. Clearly the 
Lancelot legend, which is known from a later Prose Lancelot, 
is here diverted from its true channel and made to serve a 
special courtois purpose. In general, the Lancelot is not so well 
written as Crestien's other works ; moreover, he left the romance 
to be completed by a certain Godefroi de Leigni. Yet few 
love stories have enjoyed a greater vogue than that of Lancelot 
and Arthur's Queen. The flame that sweeps through Paolo and 
Francesca in the Divine Comedy ultimately has this source — 
for it was a prose version of the Lancelot story that these lovers 
found, and reading it read no more: 

Quel giorno piu non vi leggemmo avante. 

In the Ivain or Chevalier an lion we return to the land of 
faery and adventure. A storm breaks over the fountain of 
Broceliande when water is poured on a rock at its brim, and 
a combat ensues in which Ivain slays the fountain's defender. 
He then woos and weds the latter 's widow, since the truth is 

Que fame a plus de mil corages. 

Vergil and Ovid said so before Crestien, and Shakespeare after 
him; the ironies of life change little. At least Crestien's heroine 
has the excuse that by nature she is a fairy-mistress, whose 
fountain, like Diana's at Nemi, needs a protector, and that the 
valiant and gracious Ivain is fitted for this role. It is true he 
subsequently revisits Arthur's court and overstays the leave 
granted him by the imperious Laudine. The result is that 
love drives him mad and he wanders distraught until finally, 
with the aid of a helpful lion — which like Androcles he be- 
friends — he wins his way back to the fountain and to the favor 
of Laudine. As firmly conceived as the Erec, this romance 
excels it as to style and expression of sentiment; in fact, Cres- 
tien never wrote better narrative than in the picturesque lines 
of the Ivain. 
Crestien died before he could complete the Conte del graal 



THE GRAIL LEGEND 47 

or Perceval; this a continuator of the work affirms. But he 
composed some ten thousand lines in which inspired by a livre 
The Holy given him by Philip of Flanders, he gave the earli- 
Grail est literary expression to the world-famed legend of 

the Holy Grail. What the Grail originally was no one knows, al- 
though explanations have not been lacking. To Crestien the 
word was still a common noun, graal meaning a dish or platter 
ordinarily used in the houses of the wealthy. Yet he himself 
speaks of it as une sainte chose and gives it qualities which are 
marvelous and in part mystical. When the dish is carried 
in a procession, the "gleam" of the Grail is beheld by hundreds 
of knights ; and a single wafer on it sustains the life of a century- 
old king. What makes it, however, the central motive of Cres- 
tien's story is the question the hero should ask with respect to 
it, failing in which he neglects the cure of a wounded Fisher 
King and inflicts harm and suffering on the land and people 
of Logres, or Britain. 

For such a part the naive and uncultured Perceval the Welsh- 
man is dramatically well chosen. Brought up as a fatherless 
boy, Perceval escapes from a too vigilant mother and makes 
his way to Arthur's court and finally to the Castle of the Grail. 
He then learns the bitterness of failure, is cursed by the Grail 
messenger, and like so many of Crestien's heroes roams madly 
through the forest. From this plight he is rescued by a hermit 
uncle, who on Good Friday gives him a lesson in humility as 
another uncle had previously instructed him in chivalry. Then 
the action starts anew: Perceval resumes his quest for the Grail, 
in which other knights now join, especially the courtly Gawain 
— whom Crestien treats as the exemplar of bravery and 
sens — until suddenly the story breaks off in the middle of a 
phrase. 

Those who continued it (to the extent of some fifty thousand 
verses) were three: Wauchier de Denain, otherwise known as 
a translator of saints' legends, a certain Manessier, and Gerbert 
de Montreuil, the author also of the Roman de la violet te. 
Wauchier, who like Manessier wrote for Joanna of Flanders, 
varies from Crestien by giving a Gawain-quest in which the 
Grail is described as riche, not holy, and its food-providing 
qualities are connected in some special way with the reproduc- 



48 THE LYRIC AND THE ROMANCE 

tive, vegetative forces of nature — so that most scholars have 
seen in Wauchier's continuation a more primitive form of the 
legend than that of Crestien. On the other hand, Manessier 
represents a more advanced stage of the story: the Grail has 
become Christianized into the vessel in which Joseph of Arima- 
thea caught the Saviour's blood, and the lance, which ac- 
companies the Grail in most versions, is that with which 
Longinus pierced the Saviour's side. Lastly, Gerbert fluctu- 
ates between these two accounts, although both he and 
Manessier end the story with Perceval's final achievement of 
the quest. 

But none of these continuations has the literary merit of the 
original Perceval. Not only does Crestien write well, he pene- 
trates the human relationships of his chief character; with him 
Perceval is the untrained youth brought through the experience 
of life to the fulness of wisdom. Crestien's romance abounds 
in touches of naive wonder at the terrible splendor of life ; a ro- 
mantic attachment of Blanchefleur for the hero is portrayed 
with a simplicity that Crestien lacks in his more sophisticated 
Cliges and Ivain; and all the episodes emerge from the general 
background of adventure with great vividness. How mighty 
the contemporary appeal of the Perceval was can be seen from 
the warning a pious monk gives Blanche of Navarre, a later 
Countess of Champagne: 

Laissiez Cliges et Perceval 

Qui les cuers perce et trait a val, 

Et les romans de vanite. 

Crestien's Perceval is not the only form which the Grail legend 
had in France. Near the close of the twelfth century a 
certain Robert de Boron (probably from Bur- 
sions of the gundy) wrote the so-called Metrical Joseph, a 
Grail Legend muc h-confused poem on the career of Joseph of 
Arimathea. This connects the Grail definitely with the cup of 
the Last Supper and relates how the followers of Joseph brought 
the Grail to England. Thus the foundation is laid for an en- 
tire Christianization of the legend and a general remodeling 
of the Grail quest, which is largely the work of the first quarter 
of the thirteenth century. 



THE GRAIL LEGEND 49 

Early in the century the prose Perlesvaus added Lancelot to 
the questers and brought the legend into connection with Glas- 
tonbury Abbey. For Glastonbury had come to be regarded as 
the Avalon from which King Arthur was some day to return; and 
to this claim it had added the other of being the primate church 
of Great Britain. Meanwhile, Robert de Boron's Joseph, to- 
gether with a fragmentary Merlin — also by Robert — had been 
remodeled in prose; and thereto was joined a new Prose Perce- 
va l — the whole constituting a trilogy on the subject of the 
Grail. In this way, by successive accretions, there arose (about 
1215) the huge Grail-Lancelot Cycle, in which Galahad, the 
ascetic son of the sinful Lancelot, replaces Perceval as the suc- 
cessful Grail hero. Attributed to Walter Map, for a reason 
that no one has been able to discover, this combination of Ar- 
thurian material in prose has continued to fascinate the imagi- 
nations of Europe down to the present day. It furnished the 
matter and much of the spirit of Sir Thomas Malory's Morte 
Darthur in the fifteenth century; and this in turn inspired 
Tennyson and the Victorian poets. Thus was Lancelot's sin 
fated to destroy the Arthurian order, while the pure and blame- 
less Galahad follows a Grail " clothed in white samite, mystic, 
wonderful " and devoid of all material attributes. In the 
words of Tennyson's Sir Percivale: 

" Lo, if I find the Holy Grail itself 
And touch it, it will crumble into dust." 

At the same time, Crestien's own poem was to inspire a 
masterpiece in Germany — the Middle High German Parzival 
(1215) by Wolfram von Eschenbach. Although Wolfram claims 
to remodel Crestien with the help of a version by an unknown 
Kiot (apparently a Frenchman), in reality he makes Parzival 
an exemplar of German treue or fidelity of character; and in so 
doing he creates a type second only to Faust, allowing always 
for the differences of time and circumstance. 

The Middle English Sir Percyvelle, a fourteenth- century 
poem in tail-rime strophes, relates the Perceval tale in bare out- 
line, making the hero, however, a sister's son of King Arthur 
and never once referring to the Grail or to the characters asso- 
ciated with it. 



50 THE LYRIC AND THE ROMANCE 

The themes of Crestien's three romances, Erec, Ivain and 
Perceval, are also treated in the famous Welsh Mabinogion, a 
delightful collection of partly indigenous Celtic tales of the 
Middle Ages. But the relationship between the Welsh and the 
French romances is still a matter of controversy among scholars. 

The genre so ably illustrated by the Champagne poet con- 
tinues to flourish in Europe throughout the medieval period, 
until it receives its coup de grace in the undying 
tory of the pages of Don Quixote — although the last state- 
Romance ment applies mainly to the exaltation of chivalry 
and not to the romances as such. 

Next to Crestien, the best-known wielder of the Matter of 
Britain is Raoul de Houdenc (after 1200). His Meraugis de 
Portlesguez accords the prize of beauty to Idoine, a superior 
Enid, and lets the hero accomplish impossible tasks in the pur- 
suit of prowess, while RaouPs Vengeance de Raguidel is one of 
the numerous tales in which Sir Gawain plays the chief part. 
But these stories have little to hold the reader except the thrill 
of adventure; and of this the Chevalier as deus espees and the 
justly popular Bel Inconnu, by Renaud de Beaujeu, are better 
examples. Yet none of these stories contains the character- 
drawing we find in the Middle English Sir Gawain and the Green 
Knight (about 1370). Here the romance of chivalry produced 
one of its fairest blossoms. Written on a theme that goes 
back to Old Irish — the so-called jeopardy whereby the green 
enchanter proffers his head provided the hero will accept a 
" return-stroke " — the motivation of the story is thoroughly 
French, Gawain's bravery and courtesy are nowhere better de- 
veloped, nor does any Arthurian romance show more humor 
and fancy. 

Meantime, the genre had an offshoot that goes under the some- 
what misleading name of romans d'aventure or fate-romances. 
Th Chivalry having become a thing apart, the courtly 

Romans " love adventure/' treated with more and more 

d'aventure rea lism as time passed, was allowed to pursue its 
own path. Thus love is considered for its own sake, as an ex- 
pression of the droit de vivre; in a word, as fate. Another trait 
is the mingling of Eastern and Arthurian matter, as in Crestien's 
Cliges. The charming Partenopeus de Blois (before 1188), from 



ROMANCES OF ADVENTURE 51 

the region north of Poitou, combines a motive related to the story 
of Cupid and Psyche with an Arthurian setting and names taken 
from the Thebes. But the earliest exponent of the new form is 
Gautier d Arras, a contemporary and in a sense the rival of 
Crestien. . Attached to the court of Thibaut of Blois, who had 
married Alice of France, another daughter of Eleanor of Poitou, 
Gautier first wrote an Eracle (about 1160), where historical and 
Eastern features are blended in a love intrigue, and then his 
better known Me et Galeron. This tale deals with the theme of 
the husband and two wives by elaborating a point discussed in 
courtly circles; namely, the extent to which blindness is an ob- 
stacle in love. In much the same way, the anonymous Amadas 
et Idoine (before 1200) contains the triangular arrangement of 
the Tristan, with the important difference that the heroine acts 
conventionally and seeks a divorce. 

Thus the romans d'aventure approach realism, and characters 
as well as motives and incidents are drawn from contemporary 
life. Crestien's pseudonyms of the Knight of the Lion and 
the Knight of the Cart, so widely imitated, now make room for 
actual personages, such as Joufroi (Geoffrey), the Camte de 
Poitiers, the Chdtelain de Coucy and the touching Chatelaine 
de Vergy, who dies because her lover stupidly betrays their 
secret. And, lastly, the background itself becomes real and 
courtois society is analyzed in detail. An excellent example of 
this is the sensuous but very artistic Guillaume de Dole. The plot 
of this story belongs to the widespread " cycle of the wager " 
involving a woman's honor, of which the Roman de la violette 
by Gerbert de Montreuil and Shakespeare's Cymbeline are later 
and better examples. But the plot of the Guillaume is second- 
ary; what makes the romance so readable today is the vigor 
and beauty of its descriptions, the picture we get of a ripe and 
joyous existence which no care can darken for long. The mas- 
terpiece, however, of the realistic genre is the Provengal Fla- 
menca. Again it is the background, a tourney at the Baths 
of Bourbon, that gives the author his opportunity. We see the 
gathering of the princely guests, the splendor of their apparel 
and their worldly pursuits; and we listen to their intrigues, 
great and small, grouped about the central affair of the lady 
Flamenca. Bound to a jealous and insupportable husband, this 



52 THE LYRIC AND THE ROMANCE 

heroine cleverly deceives him and thereby not only cures his 
jealousy but retains her own lover. The Provencals called 
this story a novas. Except for its metrical form, the Flamenca 
differs but little from a modern novel. 

But narrative fiction also had a " short-story " form in the 
twelfth century. This went under the name of lai. And the 
The Narra- counterpart to Crestien, in this field, was Marie 
tive Lais de France, who spent most of her life in England 
and may have been the half-sister of Henry II. Written 
for the same courtois society as the romances, the lais are artis- 
tic presentations of a simple situation, based generally on a 
widespread folklore motif. Their art, if not their substance, 
is perpetuated in the later fabliau and, as respects prose, in the 
novella (see Ch. IV). 

There is little doubt that Marie de France derived her ma- 
terial from the contes which the Bretons told in the Norman 
and French courts to the accompaniment of their songs (Irish 
loid or laid) — whence she took the name for her stories. What 
determined her preference, she says, was that others were writ- 
ing romances and she regarded this field as preempted. Marie 
was also the author of a collection of Fables, modeled on a 
medieval Romulus — as such fable collections were then called 
— and under the title of L'Espurgatoire de Saint Patrice she 
paraphrased in French a medieval Latin " vision " by Henry of 
Saltrey. These works are presumably later than the Lais, with 
which she seems to have begun her literary career (about 1165). 

Her subjects are the love of a fairy for a luckless knight, 
compelled by a jealous queen to reveal his secret (Lanval) ; the 
metamorphosis of a knight in the one case {Yonec) into a hawk, 
and in the other (Bisclavret) into a were-wolf whom a faith- 
less wife betrays; the self-effacement of a wife (Eliduc), in 
another case of a maiden {Fraisne), for the man she loves; the 
love-tryst of Tristan and Isolt (Chevrefeuille) , symbolized by 
the honeysuckle twining about the hazel bush, and so on. Like 
Crestien, Marie exploits the rich mine of Ovid, and of her own 
she adds a strong romantic sentiment which gives her tales a 
wistful, meditative tone. Best of all, perhaps, is her simple, 
translucent style: the narrative of the Lais flows easily, and the 
various situations stand out clearly and dramatically without 



AUCASSIN AND NICOLETTE 53 

the clumsy interruptions which mar the narrative of many 
romances. 

Few French lais are equal, and none superior, to Marie's. 
Several anonymous ones treat Breton subjects; notably Graelent, 
Tydorel and Tyolet. The Lai du Cor and the Manteau mal 
taille are written on the theme of the fidelity of women. Guiron 
tells the story of the husband who forces his wife to eat the 
heart of her lover — a motif that is incorporated in the romance 
of the Chdtelain de Coucy (see above). One of the best sur- 
vives in the form of the Middle English Sir Orfeo. Here the 
classical tale of Orpheus pnd Eurydice is retold as a typical 
Breton lay: the tone and the atmosphere are made courtly, 
the motivation is built up on the basis of a Celtic fairy-tale, 
the sad ending is changed to a happy one, and the poet clev- 
erly places his own interest in the foreground — Sir Orfeo is 
a minstrel. This lai is as complete a reduction to type as medieval 
literature has to offer. Derived from a French source, it may 
be referred to as a standard, " to show " — says Professor Ker 
— " what can be done in the medieval art of narrative, with 
the simplest means and the smallest amount of decoration." 

One important narrative, however, defies classification. This 
is the charming story of Aucassin et Nicolette (about 1200). 

Th In matter it resembles the Floire et Blanche fieur, 

" Aucassin one of the earlier types of romans d'aventure. But 
et Nicolette " s i nce it i s written in alternating prose and verse, 
an arrangement found in Arabic and Old Irish, its form is unique 
in France and may have been the invention of the unknown 
author. The verse portions are in seven-syllable assonant lines. 

To judge by the single extant manuscript, the author com- 
posed his work in the Picard dialect, but he laid its scene in 
the south of France, in the country near Beaucaire. Here 
Aucassin, the count's son, is desperately in love with Nicolette, 
a Saracen captive, the daughter of the " King of Carthage." The 
deep love of the youthful pair, their flight from the stern parent 
who is planning a loftier match for his son, their separation by 
pirates and their final reunion, effected by Nicolette disguised as 
a jongleur: these are the principal episodes of the action, and 
show the kinship of the plot with such tales as the Apollonius 
of Tyre and its derivatives. But again the plot is secondary 



54 THE LYRIC AND THE ROMANCE 

to the author's insight into human passion, his faith in the beauty 
of life and his great gift of expression. Thus he fastens our 
attention on his characters, whom he describes as taken from his 
own observation and experience. He knows that his tale is 
" noble and courtly," that no man, " sick as he may be," will 
not rejoice to hear it. Having said this, he lets his characters 
reveal themselves. " Nicolette," says Aucassin, " were she em- 
press of Constantinople, or of Germany, or Queen of France or 
England, 'twould be little enough for her, so noble is she and 
gracious and well-bred and compact of all good qualities." Or 
take the famous passage in which Aucassin denounces the color- 
less Christian Paradise and concludes: " But to Hell will I go. 
For to Hell go the fine clerks and the fine knights, who have 
died in tourneys and in great wars. . . . And there go the 
gold and the silver, and the vair and the grey ; and there go too 
harpers and minstrels and the kings of this world." Could 
youthful enthusiasm speak plainer? Moreover, romantic as it 
is, the story does not lack contrasts with the darker side of life. 
Witness Aucassin's conversation with the ploughboy who, hav- 
ing lost one of his oxen, dares not to enter town where he will 
be cast into prison — and who yet worries most because his 
mother is sick at home and would have no support. In this 
way does the poet set the love story over against the real world 
of fact, and by his sense of values raise his narrative to an epic 
plane. Stereotyped phrasings, courtly conceits, snatches of in- 
cident from this tale or that, bits of burlesque out of some legend 
of a land of Cockayne — all these the poet has gathered into his 
web and fused with his narrative. Aucassin et Nicolette is 
the idyll of medieval literature; the polished jewel of its best 
narrative art. The story has been admirably translated into 
English by Andrew Lang. 



CHAPTER III 
THE ALLEGORY AND THE EARLY DRAMA 

Love of abstraction, which appears in thirteenth- century 
" learning " and, indeed, in Gothic art after 1200, is also seen 
in the rise of literary allegory. Allegory, that peculiarly cleri- 
cal product which places the imagination in the service of the 
reason, is not merely a personification but the conscious repre- 
sentation of one action in terms of an entirely different action. 
Thus " the book of life, without ceasing to be a true story, 
becomes a volume of symbols." 

This is not the place to examine the origins of allegory in de- 
tail. Suffice it to say that, aside from Biblical interpretation 
or sensus, which is of course allegorical, independent allegoriza- 
tions are current early. Examples in Latin are the Concilium 
Amoris (about 1100) and the influential De Phyllide et Flora 
(shortly after), types of debate which symbolize the comparative 
merits of clerical and chivalric life. And French instances 
are to be found in the various visions and dreams re- 
flecting the state of the soul when freed from the body, which 
go back to the Psychomachia of Prudentius and to Cicero's Som- 
nium Scipionis as well as to the rich " vision " literature of the 
medieval church. Moreover, such treatises as the De Amove 
of Andreas Capellanus, together with the influence of Ovid, lead 
authors to personify moral and physical traits and to discuss 
the love motive in abstract forms. 

In the Dit de la Rose, a short poem of the close of the twelfth 
century, a rose figures as the symbol of the heroine; and in 
The Raoul de Houdenc's Songe d'Enfer (see above, Ch. 

" Roman II) consistent allegory in the form of a dream ex- 

la e presses a personal experience. The combination of 
these two features is characteristic of the Roman de la Rose, 
except for the Divine Comedy, which it foreshadows, the great- 
est allegory of European literature. 

55 



56 THE ALLEGORY AND THE EARLY DRAMA 

The Roman de la Rose, in some twenty-two thousand eight- 
syllable verses, falls into two parts. These are so different in 
concept and execution as to constitute two separate works, 
although the plot is continuous throughout. The first part, by 
Guillaume de Lorris, comprises four thousand and sixty- 
eight verses of the poem, and was written before 1234, probably 
between 1225 and 1230. The second and in some respects the 
more important part, by Jean Clopinel from Meun on the Loire, 
did not appear until close to 1270. Thus the work bridges the 
thirteenth century and represents, in its contrasting elements, 
the passage from the courtois to the bourgeois point of view. 
In Guillaume the courtly ideal reaches its apogee, and in Clo- 
pinel, aptly called the Voltaire of the century, the hard common- 
sense of the " third estate " scores its earliest victory. The first 
part is a poem on the psychology of love, the second a philippic 
against the evils of medieval society in general. 

Guillaume relates that in the spring-time of life he had a 
dream, which has since come true. At the command of the God 
of Love he has put it into verse, for the delight of his readers 
and in honor of her 

Qui tant est digne d'estre amee 
Qu'el doit estre Rose clamee. 

The dream is as follows: In May, when Nature weaves her 
chaplet of leaves and flowers and joy reigns supreme, the lover 
strolls " cousant ses manches " (a curious fashion) toward the 
bank of a river. Having washed his face in the river's clear 
waters, he comes to a high wall, surrounding a spacious garden. 
On its outer side the wall is decorated with ten wonderful paint- 
ings in gold and blue colors. The art with which they are fash- 
ioned arrests his eye (obviously Guillaume is a connoisseur) , and 
he lingers to describe them. They represent respectively, Hatred 
and her boon companions, Felony and Villainy, and surround- 
ing this central group on the one side, Cupidity, Avarice, Envy 
and Sorrow, and on the other, Old Age, Hypocrisy (Papelardie) 
and Poverty. In spite of these significant figures, the lover 
knocks at the " door " of the garden and is admitted by a noble 
lady, called Idleness (Oiseuse). Her friend is Delight {Deduit), 
who had built the garden in order to enjoy it with her. Led 



GUILLAUME DE LORRIS 57 

by Idleness over paths scented with fennel and mint and shaded 
by trees from Saracen lands, the lover reaches a lawn where 
Mirth (Liesse) is dancing with Delight. Courtesy asks him to 
join in the " carole," an invitation he accepts. The other 
couples in the dance are: Cupid who leads Beauty, Riches who 
showers favor on Bounty (Largesse), and Candor and Youth, 
each with an appropriate partner. Passing on through groves 
of domestic and foreign trees of various descriptions, the lover 
arrives at the Fountain of Youth, the water of which is of crys- 
talline purity and on the border of which stands the inscription: 

Here died the handsome Narcissus. 

Looking down into its depths, he sees reflected in a mirror 
— C'est li mireors perilleus — 

amidst a multitude of lovely objects some rose-bushes in 
bloom. The beauty of one particular rose fascinates him, and 
willingly he would have picked it were it not for the brambles 
and thorns which protect it. In the meantime, unseen by him, 
Cupid has approached, and seeing the lover lost in rapture, he 
pierces his heart with the arrows of Beauty, Simplicity and 
Courtesy. By the use of further arrows Cupid then completes 
the capture, and the lover declares himself his vassal. There- 
upon, Cupid locks the lover's heart with a golden key, and in- 
structs him in the rules of love, its trials and tribulations, and 
the support to be derived from Hope, Sweet Thoughts, Sweet 
Speaking and Sweet Looks. 

After this exposition of the Art of Love, Cupid disappears. 
But presently the gracious figure of Welcome invites the lover 
to approach the Rose. This summons he follows with avidity, 
but when he grows bold and proclaims that as the servant of 
love he intends to pick the Rose, Welcome cries out, and Dan- 
ger forces the lover to retreat. In despair the lover now la- 
ments, and is reproached by Reason — descending from her lofty 
tower — for foolishly associating with Idleness and Delight. 
Better for him, she says, if he had never listened to Cupid. It 
is needless to say, Reason's advice falls on deaf ears, and the 
lover seeks consolation of Friendship (Ami), who teaches him 
how to appease Danger. The result is that he is again allowed 



58 THE ALLEGORY AND THE EARLY DRAMA 

to see the Rose, and encouraged by the intercession of Venus, 
Welcome grants him permission to kiss it. 

Unfortunately, Slander (Malebouche) sees the kiss, and by 
sending the news broadcast arouses Jealousy, who after chiding 
Shame (Honte) for her indifference, builds a wall about the 
Rose and locks up Welcome in a tower, guarded by an old 
woman. The lover, his grief increased by the remembered 
savor of the Rose — 

Car je suis a greignor meschief 
Par la joie que j'ai perdue, 
Que s'onques ne l'eusse eue, 

For I am in greater trouble, 
Through the joy which I have lost, 
Than if never I had had it, — 

is left helpless outside. 

It is obvious that Guillaume did not intend to have his poem 
end quite so abruptly, and in fact Jean de Meun states that 
Guillaume's death prevented its completion. But what was 
the end to be? Most of the manuscripts — and there are some 
two hundred — contain the continuation by Jean de Meun. Two 
alone have the separate ending of about eighty verses. Accord- 
ing to the latter, the lover is finally put in complete possession 
of the Rose. Granting that Guillaume considered his work as 
almost finished, it is clear that little remained to be said except 
to explain the dream in terms that all would understand. Thus, 
allowing for this addition, we may conclude that Guillaume's 
poem is practically a unit. 

" To comprehend a Gothic cathedral," says Professor Saints- 
bury, " the Rose should be as familiar (to us) as the Dies Irae. 
For the spirit of it is indeed, though faintly ' decadent,' even 
more the medieval spirit than that of the Arthurian legend, 
precisely for the reason that it is less universal, less of humanity 
generally, more of this particular phase of humanity." It is 
true, the Rose is typical of an age and a civilization. But what 
distinguishes Guillaume de Lorris' work from that of his con- 
temporaries is its art. Guillaume has caught the vividness of 
the dream experience. His personifications are alive; they act 
within their roles; there are no tiresome digressions, no scho- 



JEAN DE MEUN 59 

lastic jeux de mots. So, too, the various aspects of the garden 
are well depicted; we are made to see the paths traversed by 
the lover and we scent the flowers. 

"L'odour des roses savorees 
M'entra ens jusques es corees — " 

" The odor of the perfumed roses 
Penetrated to the depths of my being," 

exclaims the impassioned poet. All critics are agreed that the 
portraits on the wall are remarkable for their delineation. In 
a different genre Guillaume de Lorris approaches the virtuosity 
of Botticelli, and the noble distinction of the latter is also his. 
As for his plot, it is firmly conceived from start to finish; far 
superior in this respect to his continuator, Guillaume makes his 
action rapid, well-proportioned and consecutive. More than 
once the poet has drawn on Ovid, especially when dealing with 
the rules of Love, but he borrows with measure and always 
adapts his imitations to the spirit of his age and the exigencies 
of his composition. In short, few works of the Middle Ages 
show more careful planning or a richer and more poetic tech- 
nique. 

Turning now to the continuation by Jean de Meun, we at 
once perceive the change from a poetic to a philosophic and 
satiric attitude. The general narrative is carried through but 
the " values are all transvalued." The lover is reproved, indeed 
scorned, for his attachment to his lady (the Rose) because 

Amours, ce est pais haineuse, 
Amours est haine amoureuse. 
C'est loiaute la desloial, 
C'est la desloiaute loial. 

Love is peace full of hate, 
Love is hate full of love . 
It is loyalty most disloyal, 
Disloyalty that proves loyal. 

These words — and there are sixty verses of them — borrowed 
by Jean de Meun from the De Planctu Naturae of Alain de Lille, 
are placed in the mouth of Reason, whom the lover in his misery 
has invoked. But the lover would prefer an outright definition. 



60 THE ALLEGORY AND THE EARLY DRAMA 

Reason replies by citing Andreas Capellanus: "Love is an af- 
fection of the soul which draws together two people of different 
sex." For some the object of love is pleasure, and this object 
is base; for others it is the continuation of the race, and this 
Reason approves. But, retorts the lover, one must love or hate, 
and hatred is worse than love. This leads Reason to define 
friendship, with its obligations — an imitation of Cicero. Friend- 
ship she recommends, provided it does not mean association 
with the rich; for Fortune is fickle, she says, and the rich are 
not happy, whether they be merchants, lawyers, physicians or 
preachers: 

Maint ribaud ont les cuers si bauz, 
Portant sas de charbon en Grieve, 
Que la poine riens ne lor grieve — 

Wretches often have joy in their hearts, 

Carrying coal to the public place, 

For the trouble they have does not smart. 

Far happier are they than kings with their treasures and ser- 
vants, since no king can call these his own. But there are other 
forms of love; namely, the love of humanity and the love of off- 
spring. Neither of these, however, interests the lover, and 
finally Reason offers herself as a worthy mistress. 

All these arguments do not convince the lover, who further 
dislikes Reason because she has used an indecent word. This 
leads Reason to attack the prudery of women, and to defend 
frankness of speech with a citation from Plato's Timaeus. 

The lover now seeks out Friendship (Ami) and is instructed 
in the Ovidian method of treating women. A description of the 
Golden Age — also from Ovid — develops the idea of equality, 
which man has long since lost: 

Un grant vilain entre eus eslurent 
Le plus ossu de quant qu'il purent, 
Le plus corsu et le graignour, 
Si le firent prince et seignour. 

A powerful serf men elected, 
The strongest they could ever find, 
The heaviest and the tallest: 
Him they made prince and lord. 



JEAN DE MEUN 61 

Nowadays women must be bought, and Ovid's precepts show us 
how to dupe without being duped. Thus the lover turns to 
Extravagance (Trop Donner), but Riches blocks his path — 
again with a long disquisition. 

This brings us back to Cupid and the main thread of the nar- 
rative. Cupid gathers his troops, and divided into four groups 
they lay siege to the tower. Fearing a defeat, he sends mes- 
sengers to Venus, the avowed enemy of Chastity. Finding 
her hunting with Adonis, they win from her a promise that 
henceforth Chastity shall be banished from women. Then fol- 
lows perhaps the most striking passage in the whole poem: 
Nature is depicted as laboring at her forge against death, who 
strives to destroy the race which Nature has produced. Art 
imitates Nature, but in vain, for the artist cannot give life, 
movement, sensation and speech to his creations. Nature com- 
plains bitterly to her companion Genius, who recalls to her 

Les figures representables 
De toutes choses corrompables. 

The representative forms 
Of all corruptible things. 

This complaint summarizes the entire physical, geographic and 
astronomical knowledge of Jean de Meun (twenty-six hundred 
verses). Of all of Nature's creatures, Man alone does not ob- 
serve her laws. Genius seeks to absolve Man but is ordered 
by Nature to join Cupid's army. Genius first sermonizes the 
combined forces on the vices of Man, and then exhorts them in 
the quest of natural love. Thus the tower is taken; a maid, 
more beautiful than Pygmalion, appears; Welcome, set free, 
grants the Rose to the hero, and the latter picks it. 

Such is the substance of Jean de Meun's work: an encyclo- 
pedia of views on every possible subject, supported by great 
learning, and revealing a master-mind. Some of the ideas are 
astonishingly bold, and one wonders that the poet dared express 
them. To be sure, in a long description of Faux-Semblant, as 
a member of Cupid's army, Jean is careful to distinguish hypo- 
crites from 



62 THE ALLEGORY AND THE EARLY DRAMA 

ome vivant 
Sainte religion siuant, 
Ne qui sa vie use en bone uevre, 
De quelque robe qu'il se cuevre. 

any living man 
Following holy religion, 
Or who employs his days in noble works, 
To whatever class he may belong. 

Nevertheless, the animus against the church is clear, and Jean's 
hatred of class privilege breathes in every line he writes. As to 
his views on women we shall hear more later; suffice it to say 
here that his scorn of the fair sex helped to keep his work alive 
at a time when many of his other ideas were out of date or in- 
appropriate. On the positive side, it is interesting to note that 
Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy was so to say his hand- 
book, that he admired the writings of Roger Bacon, and that he 
never fails to uphold science against superstition — another 
reason for comparing him to Voltaire. Lastly, Jean's style is 
energetic, imaginative (his account of a storm is almost the 
equal of Rabelais') and often eloquent, a number of his lines 
having become proverbial. 

As an artist, however, Jean de Meun is inferior to his prede- 
cessor. His continuation lacks harmony, emotional unity and 
a dominating idea, to say nothing of its prolixity. Apparently 
he wrote the " continuation " in his youth, but his other works 
of a later date — a Testament and a Codicille — while showing 
unabated energy, are scarcely more artistic. Thus, while Jean 
de Meun made the Roman de la Rose a vehicle of philosophic 
thought, as a work of literature it owes most to Guillaume de 
Lorris. 

The vogue of the poem was almost as great in foreign countries 
as in France. As early as 1300 it was translated into Flemish 
by Hein van Aken. An adaptation in sonnet form, 
of the called II Fiore, and an imitation in rimed couplets, 

"Rose" n j) e tt d'Amore, probably both by a certain Du- 

rante (who is perhaps identical with Dante Alighieri) , were made 
in Italy. Two translations into English verse, the one by 
Chaucer, the other anonymous, are extant in fragmentary 
forms. Petrarch considered the romance the greatest French 



INFLUENCE OF THE ROSE 63 

poem and sent a copy of it to Guido di Gonzaga, Duke of 
Mantua. 

In addition to its many manuscripts, various tapestries illus- 
trating scenes from the poem testify to its popularity in France. 
In 1290 Gui de Mori reworked it by making various changes, 
but his rifacimento had little success. On the other hand, a 
much later prose version, in which the allegory has been made 
religious, by Jean Molinet — the rhetoriqueur poet — was pub- 
lished in several editions. And in 1526, Clement Marot, who 
calls Guillaume de Lorris the French Ennius, modernized the 
language of both parts for an edition which was very popular. 

There is little doubt that the Rose furnished inspiration to 
other poets. It is mentioned as a source in the Dit de la Pan- 
there by Nicole de Margival and in the Cour oV Amour by 
Mahieu Poriier, works of the end of the fourteenth century. 
But allegory was then in fashion, and a direct influence, except 
in general idea, is hard to trace. In the Middle French period 
(especially the fifteenth century) Jean de Meun's attack on 
woman led to a debate which shows how important was the 
influence of the Rose. The debate began with the Pelerinage 
de la vie humaine by Guillaume de Digulleville, written about 
1335. This allegory, which was to enjoy great popularity — 
Chaucer translated selections from it and John Bunyan modeled 
his Pilgrim's Progress on it — is prefaced by the remark that 
Jean de Meun was inspired by lust (luxure). But the question 
does not become acute until some fifty years later Christine de 
Pisan and Gerson, chancellor of the University of Paris, lock 
arms against Jean de Montreuil (Bk. II, Ch. II), one of the 
earliest French humanists and apologist of Jean de Meun. This 
" grant guerre " lasted three years, the most important document 
in the quarrel being Gerson's Tractatus (1402) — also an alle- 
gory. And even at the end of this discussion the strife does not 
cease, for men continued to take sides for or against Jean de 
Meun until interest in the position of women abated with the 
triumph of the Renaissance. The poets of the Pleiade (1550), 
in spite of their neglect of the Middle Ages, look upon the Rose 
as a work of which every Frenchman should feel proud. 

Another great allegory, the Roman de Renard, derives its 
method from a genre known in antiquity, namely, the Aesopic 



64 THE ALLEGORY AND THE EARLY DRAMA 

fable. Differing from the Rose in the use of animals instead of 
personified human traits, the Renard resembles it in allegorizing 
mt . . the animal world. While parts of the Renard doubt- 
Fable and less go back to the twelfth century, the body of the 
the" Renard " W ork (arranged in "branches") was composed 
after 1200 — a time when courtly idealism was disintegrating 
and bourgeois irony scored its first victories. 

The Aesopic fable had reappeared in Old French under the 
title of Ysopet. Such was the name of the fable collection of 
Marie de France (see Ch. II), and in the thirteenth century 
there was an Ysopet de Lyon, and so on. These works, however, 
were not derived from Greek but from medieval collections called 
Romuli, which also included fables by the Latin writers Phae- 
drus and Avianus, and which owed their name to the erroneous 
belief that a certain Romulus, son of Tiberius, had composed 
them. In the hands, then, of the medieval rhetorician the fable 
underwent considerable expansion. Any tale, whether strictly 
animalistic or not, having a moral to preach could be told as a 
fable; and oriental apologues (including exempla of Sanskrit 
origin) were often incorporated in the genre. In general, says 
M. Sudre, " les fables medievales les meilleures n'offrent que des 
qualites secondaires: clarte d'exposition, rapidite du recit, par- 
faite appropriation de la morale a Taction." True as this is, 
the fables of Marie are gracefully and deftly told, and the trait 
of making the fable reflect contemporary manners is seen in 
Marie's defense of feudalism as a system. It is from a complete 
identification of the animal world with society, in the manner 
of an epic or a romance, that the Roman de Renard sprang. 

In this direction, too, there were antecedents. As early as 
the tenth century, the Ecbasis captivi allegorized society in the 
guise of animals — the wolf appears as a hypocritical priest, 
the story of the Sick Lion is told with all the byplay of an epic 
action, and the flight of the calf from its stable is made to rep- 
resent the escape of a monk from his cloister. It needed but 
the appearance of the Latin Ysengrimus (1150), by Nivard, a 
monk of Ghent, to add the characteristic names of Renard, 
Ysengrin, Noble, etc., by which the animals are henceforth 
known — and the best-epic is born. To this Latin work 
the French Renard is indebted for much, if not most, of its 
material. 



THE ROMANCE OF THE FOX 65 

In its complete form the Roman de Renard consists of some 
thirty thousand eight-syllable verses, divided into twenty-seven 
branches, sixteen of which antedate the rest and give the main 
thread of the narrative. 

The sixteen branches relate how Renard, the Fox, and Ysen- 
grin, the Wolf, wage a hard-fought struggle of cunning and 
strength until, apparently vanquished, the Fox is carried forth 
in funeral procession by the court of Noble, the Lion. But 
Renard's death is only feigned, and before the end of the would- 
be burial, he is in full flight to the amazement and terror of the 
other animals. Thus Renard is really immortal — ever ready, 
at the beck of the medieval romancer to begin his tricks anew. 
These are the subject of the various branches or contes that com- 
prise the Renard. 

Some embody a well-known fable, such as the Sick Lion (X), 
the Cock and the Fox (II), the Crow and the Cheese (II). 
Others are probably of folklore origin, as, for example, the 
League of the Weak (VIII) or the amusing account of How the 
Wolf lost his Tail (III), a story found also in our American 
Brer Rabbit collections. The names of the animals are either 
personified traits, like Noble the Lion; or they are traditional 
names, such as Renard (German Raginhart) himself, Brichmer 
the Stag and Bernard the Ass. Hence, although typical, the 
animals are treated as individuals, with distinctive traits of 
their own, and the structure of feudal society is carried over 
into their world. Renard is the compere of Ysengrin, he resides 
in chastel Renard; and both animals are heroically conceived. 

Nevertheless, it is the Fox who occupies the center of the 
stage. He is the light-footed and ingenious rogue, a " furred 
Jonathan Wild," whose cunning triumphs constantly. His main 
exploit, that which gives epic texture to the cycle, is the rape of 
Ysengrin's wife, Dame Her sent. This event forms the climax 
of branch II, about which the other branches can be grouped. 
Thus an attempt is made to bring Renard to justice; it fails be- 
cause Noble, with characteristic weakness, himself impugns the 
reliability of Hersent as a witness. What sensible man, argues 
Brichmer, would not doubt her word since Hersent is clearly an 
interested party. And so the reader is treated to an exquisite 
example of the miscarriage of justice — a masterful satire on 
social conditions. 



66 THE ALLEGORY AND THE EARLY DRAMA 

But the best rendering of the feudal world is found in branch 
I, the Plaid or Judgment of Renard. Here the irony of the situ- 
ation rises to a climax, both in idea and in style. Renard is 
now accused by Ysengrin before the assembled court of Noble. 
His acquittal seems assured, when enter Chantecler and his four 
wives carrying upon a litter the body of a member of their 
family, killed by the Fox. The body is prepared for burial, the 
prayers for the dead are recited, and Renard is remanded for 
justice. He tries lie after lie, and when these fail to win his 
judges, he audaciously pretends to have a contrite heart and 
asks leave to undertake a pilgrimage outre mer. Sainte-Beuve 
has pertinently asked " si le hasard seul a pu produire une paro- 
die si fine qu'elle ressemble a la vie meme? " Not chance, as- 
suredly, but a great poet. Yet we do not know who the author 
of the Renard was. Some of the branches have been attributed 
to a certain Pierre de Saint-Cloud. The only fact we have is 
that the main part of the Renard was written in the northeast 
of France, not far from Flanders. 

As for the influence of the French romance, the earlier sec- 
tions of it inspired the Middle High German Reinhart Fuchs 
(1180) , by Heinrich der Glichezare- On the other hand, Goethe's 
famous Reinecke Fuchs is derived from a Dutch version of the 
French poem, the Reinaert, made in the thirteenth century by 
a certain Willem. In France the character of Renard gradually 
lost much, if not all, of its charm. Whatever was base and 
cruel in humanity was associated with the Fox's name, and 
almost any contemptible act was called a renardie. Such is the 
spirit of the C ouronnement de Renard, written in Flanders about 
1260. More cynical still is the Renard le nouvel by Jacquemard 
Gelee of Lille — an out-and-out allegory, of the close of the thir- 
teenth century. Here Renard is the enemy of Noble, symboliz- 
ing the struggle between evil and good in the bosom of the 
church. The poet Rutebeuf wrote a Renard le Bestourne, ® 
short satiric piece with obscure allusions. Finally, the encyclo- 
pedic Renard le Contrefait, by an unknown poet of the four- 
teenth century, contains a history of the world which throws 
many interesting side lights on social customs. All these works 
show how popular this form of satirical allegory became in the 
latter Middle Ages. It afforded an opportunity to speak plainly, 



ORIGINS OF THE DRAMA 67 

and it stimulated the French love of ridicule — as the original 
Eenard had stated: 

tel chose dire 
Dont je vos puisse fere rire, 
Quar je sai bien, ce est la pure. 

such things to tell 
Whereby, I know, laugh you may, 
For that forsooth is the way of truth. 

The drama in France does not reach its florescence until the 
later Middle Ages, in the fifteenth century. It waited for a pub- 
The Early lic wnicn came witn tne development of the great in- 
Drama dustrial centers and the rise of the bourgeoisie to 

a place of prominence. Henceforth the drama filled the gap 
left by the decline of the national epic. 

Before this time, however, drama had existed in several well- 
known and on the whole distinct forms, comprised under the 
generic name jeu. There was the liturgical play, having its 
origin in the ceremonies and festivals of the church and later 
developing into the so-called mystere or Mystery-play (1374) ; 
the miracle or Miracle-play, which applies the dramatic method 
to the life of a saint; and the secular, comic jeu, peculiar to 
Adam de la Halle, a poet of Arras. Of these types, the first two 
represent the real dramatic tradition of the Middle Ages. The 
Middle Ages had lost the distinction between tragedy and com- 
edy as applied to the theater, and while pure comedy forms were 
plentiful, being found, for example, in the jarce and the sottie, 
these have no connection with the literary comedy of antiquity. 

Thus, the French drama is primarily of religious origin. The 
point has often been made that in this respect it offers an analogy 
to the dramas of Greece and India. And, in fact, the Christian 
mass contains the essential elements of dramatic action: (1) as 
to content or idea, in that the mass symbolizes the sacrifice of 
the Saviour's body for the sinful world; and (2) as to form, in 
the dialogue by recitation and song (responsorium) between the 
priest and the choir. On this foundation it was easy to build, 
especially as the life of the time centered so largely in the church. 

The first step in the dramatic evolution was the introduction 
into the mass of a brief dialogue, called a " trope," and the 



68 THE ALLEGORY AND THE EARLY DRAMA 

use of antiphonal song in the accompanying music. Thus 
we find the Easter service adorned with a trope on the Resur- 
rection — the Quern quaeritis in sepulcro, 6 Christicolae? 
(Whom seek ye in the tomb, Christians?) — and presently 
the Christmas mass is similarly expanded. But these are 
only the beginnings. Finally the Holy Script itself is taken 
over into the dialogue, in which the vulgar tongue then appears 
by the side of Latin, and we get (early in the twelfth century) 
a genuine liturgical play in the form of the Sponsus or Bride- 
groom. Derived from the story of the Wise and Foolish Virgins, 
this " drama " consists of ninety-four verses, arranged in 
strophes, part of which are in Latin and the remainder in French. 
The action, which is extremely simple, begins with the prediction 
by the choir of the advent of the Bridegroom, who at the close 
pronounces the doom of the Foolish Virgins. The Sponsiis was 
composed in Angoumois, near the Provengal border. 

The next stages in the growth of drama include the enlarge- 
ment of the central theme, the complete vulgarization into 
French, and lastly the separation of the play from the mass. 
An important advance in these respects is found in the Repre- 
sentation d'Adam, of the middle of the twelfth century. Here 
the text is almost entirely French and the scene is laid on the 
parvis or square in front of the church doors. But this work 
has also a distinct merit of its own. In form of a trilogy, it sum- 
marizes for the Christmas service various aspects of Christian 
dogma, as seen in the fall of Adam, the murder of Abel by Cain 
and the prophecy of Christ. Unequal as these parts are, some 
of the characters are well delineated — especially Eve, strikingly 
described as " faiblette et tendre chose " — and an element of 
realism pervades the action. The third and principal part of 
the Adam is the most interesting. This is a version of the fa- 
mous sermon falsely assigned to St. Augustine (known separately 
as the Prophetes du Christ), in which a long line of prophets 
from Adam to Nebuchadnezzar foretell the coming of the Sa- 
viour. Theme and method are thus alike significant, for while 
the subject is of the highest dramatic import the opportunity for 
character-drawing is excellent. Of interest, too, are the stage 
directions. These call for Paradise on a " raised place " in front 
of the church door and for the abduction of the prophets into 



MIRACLE-PLAYS 69 

" hell," the location of which, however, is not stated precisely. 
It requires no stretch of the imagination to see how from this 
simple setting later playwrights pass to the elaborate scenery, 
with various booths or " mansions," such as we shall find in the 
mysteres. 

The Representation d'Adam is in Norman dialect and w T as pre- 
sumably written in England. The Miracle-play {miracle) , which 
The is the chief dramatic form of the thirteenth century, 

" Miracle " brings us back to France proper. Its first and best 
example is the Jeu de Saint Nicolas, by Jean Bodel of Arras, 
best known as a writer of epic. In origin the miracle is a drama- 
tized saint's life. Its connection with the liturgy is therefore slight. 
Indeed, its beginnings have recently been traced to " musical serv- 
ices as an un-ecclesiastical feature of St. Nicholas' feast day cele- 
bration (Dec. 6)." Thus, when Bodel wrote, he followed an es- 
tablished tradition. Because of its personal touches his play has 
often been termed the "first romantic drama." With great freedom 
Bodel sketches a battle between Christians and Saracens, and 
when the former are all dead but one, he allows the saint to per- 
form the " miracle " whereby the survivor's life is spared. A 
scene between thieves in a tavern is made almost as striking as 
the main action. Evidently Bodel was no respecter of sources. 
His play abounds in lyrical passages and in realism of detail. 
Incidentally, the first thieves' slang — later called argot — is 
found there. 

Another early example of the same genre is the Miracle de 
Theophile (thirteenth century) by Rutebeuf. This embodies 
the theme later found in the Faust stories: a monk has bartered 
his soul to the Devil and finally, having grown repentant, he re- 
covers it through the intercession of the Virgin. Rutebeuf was 
a jongleur, a satirist of considerable power, who counted among 
his patrons the eldest daughter of Louis IX, Isabella of Navarre. 
For her he composed a Life of St. Elizabeth and a Complainte 
on Thibaut V, her husband, who died in 1270. He also had a 
hand in writing allegory; but his shorter poems, especially the 
Dis des Jacobins, are among his best productions. In these his 
individualism has a free rein and he approaches Villon as a 
singer of the outlaw class. His Theophile is the first dramatiza- 
tion of a miracle of the Virgin. The plot follows the Greek 



70 THE ALLEGORY AND THE EARLY DRAMA 

legend (Theophilus is a priest of Cilicia) and the action is 
distributed over eight " mansions " — as the booths designating 
the place of the action were called — extending from Heaven to 
Hell. While the play as a whole is tedious, the lyric parts throb 
with genuine emotion. 

It is in the fourteenth century, however, that the Miracle-plays 
reach their apogee. The Quarante Miracles de Notre Dame of 
that period form a kind of cycle, which in volume exceeds the 
entire extant drama of the early period. But their chief value 
today is sociological rather than literary. Written for a puy 
or literary guild of Notre Dame, probably located in Paris, 
they throw a side light on manners and customs of the age 
such as few other works do. Thus they differ as to style 
and structure ; some are preceded by short sermons in prose, some 
contain serventois — a lyric form — in honor of the Virgin, a 
recurrent feature is the use of the rondel to celebrate her ap- 
proach, and so on. But all agree in introducing the Virgin as a 
sort of Dea ex machina. A favorite theme is that of a wife 
slandered by a revengeful lover — occurring in the Miracle de 
Notre Dame de la Marquise de la Gaudine and in a host of other 
examples, including one of the Mysteres de Notre Dame de 
Liesse (sixteenth century). The authorship of the Miracles de 
Notre Dame is unknown. In modern times, the type has been 
revived for the stage by Maeterlinck in his version of the Legend 
of Sister Beatrice. 

As indicated above, the dramatic work of Adam de la Halle 
or Adam Le Bossu stands in a class by itself. The attempt to 
Adam de connect his name with the puy or guild of Arras (his 
la Halle home town) fails because it cannot be shown that 

this puy occupied itself with the drama. The probability is that 
Adam wrote for a company of friends who had no official func- 
tion. In any case, we now come to the most independent dra- 
matic form of the Middle Ages: the secular, comic jeu. 1 It is 
Adam himself who has the chief part in the Jeu de la Feuillee 
(between 1255 and 1264) , the title of which refers to the arbor 
(ieuillee) beneath which the May-festivals took place. 

1 In origin Adam de la Halle's jeux doubtless go back to folklore sources. 
They have parallels in the wooing plays, jigs and "mummings" found in northern 
Europe, especially England. Of such survivals there is a delightful account in 
Thomas Hardy's The Return of the Native. 



ADAM DE LA HALLE 71 

The action begins with Adam's wishing to leave Arras and his 
wife Maroie, who wearies him, in order to become a clerk in 
Paris. But one cannot travel without money, and his father, 
on the score of his own maladies, refuses to provide any. A 
physician tells the father that his disease is avarice and men- 
tions others similarly afflicted. This leads to a tirade against 
the abuses of the times, in which a blind boy, an itinerant monk 
and others take part. It happens to be the first of May, and 
Morgan the fairy is expected. She arrives to the wild notes of 
the maisnie Helkkin (Harlequin), a fairy-king resembling the 
German Erlkonig. Among the fairies present is Maglore. She 
feels slighted, and while her companions promise Adam fame as 
a poet she condemns him to forget his desire for learning in the 
arms of his hated wife. The play closes with the monk's sur- 
render of his relics to his host as bail. The analogy with Aris- 
tophanes is clear, while the similarity to A Midsummer-Night's 
Dream is striking. The Jeu de la Feuillee is at once poetic and 
gross, purely fanciful and harshly satiric. Certainly, in the ex- 
tant literature of the time, it is unique. 

Of Adam's other play, the Jeu de Robin et Marion, the most 
characteristic feature is the obvious adaptation of a pastourelle 
(see above, Ch. II) to a musical, dramatic form. Thus it is 
spoken of as a forerunner of comic opera. Robin loves Marion, 
and together they ward off an importunate knight. This occurs 
amid scenes of merry-making and frolic; a wolf is driven from 
the flock attended by the two shepherds, and the play ends in a 
dance which carries the company off to the woods. The beauty 
and grace of the entire composition has often been noted. Cer- 
tain lines breathe the spring-time of life, although many of the 
motifs are commonplaces — for example, the refrain 

Robins m'aime, Robins m'a, 
Robins m'a demandee, si m'ara, 

is found in a pastourelle of Perrin d'Angecourt (1250 and after). 
From the Jeu du Pelerin, by another author, though it was added 
to Adam's work as a kind of " filler," we learn that Adam died 
in Naples. It is probable that his comedy was performed there 
before the court of Charles of Anjou in 1283 or 1284. 



72 THE ALLEGORY AND THE EARLY DRAMA 

With the dramatization in 1395 of the story of the patient 
Griselda — the so-called Estoire de Griseldis — the early drama 
in France may be said to close. Although a secular work, the 
Estoire de Griseldis, consisting of two parts, forms a kind of 
miroir des dames exalting the unnatural role of the long-suffering 
wife. In the fifteenth century the drama enters the more definite 
channels of the mystere, the moralite, the sottie and the farce. 
These types involve a consideration of the drama as an organ- 
ized social product, toward which the preceding age had been 
feeling its way. 



CHAPTER IV 

HISTORY, DIDACTIC LITERATURE AND 
STORIOLOGY 

Artistic prose is always a late arrival in the literary field. 
To this France is no exception. It is not until the close of the 
twelfth century that Pierre de Beauvais, translator of the Pseudo- 
Turpin (see Ch. I), chooses prose, he s^ys, because "rime re- 
quires the addition of words not found in the Latin/' About the 
same time, as we have seen, many of the Arthurian romances 
appear in prose, and the Aucasmn et Nicolette employs prose 
in most of its narrative portions. 

But it is chiefly in the domain of history that prose-writing 
Was to flourish. The vernacular histories of the twelfth century 
were exclusively rimed chronicles. Like Wace's Brut, the Es- 
toire des Engleis by Geoffrey Gaimer is an expanded paraphrase 
in verse of the Historia regum Britanniae (Ch. II) . Wace him- 
self also wrote a Roman de Rou or Geste des Normans (1174) ; 
and Benoit de Sainte-More carried his Chronique of the Norman 
kings down to the death of Henry I. But the only approach to 
modern historical writing — in this early period — is a biog- 
raphy. This is the Vie de Saint Thomas Becket by Gamier de 
Pont-Sainte-Maxence, which we have mentioned before as the 
earliest document in the Francian dialect. Garnier still writes 
in verse and his outlook is strictly clerical ; but he shows a sense 
of historical fact and he is impartial enough to condemn the 
arrogance of Henry II without mincing the hypocrisy of the 
Roman church. He wrote in 1173, just thirty-six years before 
the appearance of Villehardouin's Conquete de Constantinople. 
With this work historical prose-writing is born. 

Geoffrey de Villehardouin (1160 to about 1212) was a knight 
of Champagne and planned his work primarily as an apologia of 
Ville- ^ ne Fourth Crusade. The success of the expedition 

hardouin had been jeopardized by rival political interests, in 

73 



74 HISTORY AND STORIOLOGY 

which those of Venice (then mistress of the Mediterranean) had 
a paramount role. An emissary on behalf of Philip of Cham- 
pagne in 1199, Villehardouin had committed himself to the 
Venetian policy. The consequence was that the crusade was 
divided between those who went directly to the Holy Land and 
others who, like Villehardouin, accompanied the Venetians to 
Constantinople. The latter, after besieging Zara (on the Dal- 
matian coast), twice captured Constantinople and then founded 
the so-called Latin Kingdom, with Baldwin of Flanders at its 
head. 

In this campaign it was Villehardouin's part to act as a special 
pleader. He was both brave and astute; and besides rescuing 
a band of French knights from annihilation by the Bulgarians 
at Adrianople, and otherwise winning distinction in military ex- 
ploits, he seems to have been the guiding mind of the expedition. 
In his castle at Messinople he wrote his book for his friends in 
France. His real motives have been often impugned. In fact, 
many historians doubt his sincerity, but his ability as a poli- 
tician and as a writer is admitted by all critics. 

In prose which is remarkable for its austere simplicity he 
dwells on the merits of his case. He solemnly states that " bien 
fust la crestientes hauciee et la terre des Turs abaissiee " if all 
parties had been united. For the aged doge, Henry Dandolo, he 
has unbounded admiration, and throughout his work the feudal 
sense of obligation to his trust runs high. The tone of the Con- 
quete is aristocratic, the whole being cast in the epic mold of re- 
strained statement and noble aims. But despite its interesting 
subject the work is poor in picturesque details. Villehardouin 
rarely describes ; whenever he does, as in the account of the blind 
doge or the siege of Constantinople, he paints in outline on a 
large canvas and leaves it to the reader to fill in the sketch. 
Hence the writer dominates his material. We see the expedition 
stripped of its vagaries, in broad outline, coldly but clearly, as 
Villehardouin wishes us to see it. 

The warmth which Villehardouin lacks is seen in the works 
of his contemporaries, Robert de Clari and Henri de Valen- 
ciennes. The first describes the Fourth Crusade from the stand- 
point of the simpler folk, " la menue gent," whom the great 
barons scorn. Here all is detail — the reverse of the Conquete. 



JOINVILLE 75 

We hear the camp-fire talk, the recital of individual deeds of 
bravery, the author's rapture at the wonders of St. Sophia, and 
so on. He wrote his work in the Picard dialect but on French 
soil, whither he returned soon after 1210. On the other hand, 
Henri de Valenciennes was a poet, the Histoire de I'empereur 
Henri — successor to Baldwin of Flanders — which is found in 
many of the Villehardouin manuscripts being a marred prose 
redaction of an original poem. Unfortunately this poem is lost, 
but such glimpses as we get of it in the prose show that it 
possessed considerable literary value. 

Another knight of Champagne, Jean de Joinville (1224-1317), 
accompanied Louis IX on the Sixth Crusade. After an adven- 
turous experience, in which he took part in the ill- 
managed campaign along the banks of the Nile 
(1248), was captured by the Saracens, and later shared in va- 
rious exploits in Syria, Joinville returned to France in 1254, not 
yet thirty years of age, and spent the rest of his life in peaceful 
pursuits. Years later, at the advanced age of eighty, he com- 
posed for his sovereign, Jeanne, Countess of Champagne and 
Queen of France, a Livre des saintes paroles et des bonnes ac- 
tions de Saint Louis. On this work, which is more of a memoir 
than a consecutive history, his fame rests. 

Joinville is above all a causeur. Though he professes to have 
a plan, Joinville gives us a chaplet of anecdotes strung about 
the career of the great King and his relations with him. Thus 
the Livre offers a strong contrast to the work of Villehardouin. 
Joinville has a bent for the picturesque and even the trivial. He 
relates that on the island of Lampedusa the crusaders found 
plenty of rabbits and two skeletons in a cave, that at Cyprus 
the King received many foreign delegations, that Louis sent to 
the Tartar princes a tent of woolen cloth (escarlate) , adorned 
with an image of the Annunciation and other Christian mysteries 
— but as to the political side of the campaign he leaves us in the 
dark. Nevertheless, his failure as a historian is amply redeemed 
by his vividness as an artist. Joinville is never at a loss for the 
proper expression to fit the characteristic feature which his eye 
catches. In particular, the noble figure of Louis, with his strong 
temper but his innate sense of justice and excessive bounty, 
emerges into the clearest possible light; and by his side the far 



76 HISTORY AND STORIOLOGY 

more material character of Joinville himself wins us by his sin- 
cerity and his frank interest in " life." We learn that he was 
courtois, well-read, and never recoiled from what he considered 
his duty; but we are told also that he revolted at the idea of 
washing the feet of the poor and that a vilain did not enter into 
his scheme of salvation. A crusader's prejudice breathes in the 
lines he pens on the Bedouins: " De touailles sont entorteilliees 
(wrapped) leur testes qui leur vont par dessous le menton, dont 
laides gens et hisdeuses sont a regarder." On the whole, his work 
is a most valuable cultural document of the time. 
But it remained for Jean Froissart (1337-1404 ? ), chronicler 
of the Hundred Years' War, to glorify individual 
prowess as no one else had glorified it. In the 
preface to his Chroniques he warns us: 

Vous veres et trouveres en ce livre comment pluiseur chevalier 
et escuier se sont fait et avanciet plus par leur proece que par leur 
lignage. Li noms de preu est si haus et si nobles, et la vertu si 
clere et belle que elle replendist en ces sales et en ces places ou 
il a assamblee et fuison de grans signeurs, et se remoustre dessus 
tous les autres. 

Thus prowess is his theme — prowess which advances men irre- 
spective of their country and birth. In its bearing on Froissart, 
the remark is significant. 

He was born at Valenciennes, in French Flanders. In 1361 
he went to England to offer his services to Queen Philippa and 
obviously in order to jaire fortune. Here he soon became the 
intimate of the great and won for himself the title and functions 
of royal historiographer. Apparently he took the post seriously, 
as much so as his vain and childlike nature permitted. " Se je 
disoie," he remarks, " ainsi et ainsi advint en ce temps, sans 
ouvrir n'esclaircir la matiere, ce seroit cronique et non pas his- 
toire." Fortunately, his patron allowed him to travel. He 
visited Scotland, where he knew Robert Bruce; he went to 
southern France in the suite of the Black Prince; he journeyed to 
Italy for the marriage of Lionel, Duke of Clarence. He had met 
Chaucer; at Milan he saw Petrarch; at Ferrara he came into 
contact with Pierre de Lusignan, King of Cyprus. For a person 
of Froissart's observant eye these were fruitful years. 

But in 1369 Philippa died, and the reaction against her party 



FROISSART 77 

at the court of Edward III drove Froissart back to Hainault in 
Flanders. Here he won in 1373 the curacy of Lestinnes and for the 
next ten years devoted himself to writing the first book of his 
Chroniques, the first version of which, composed from the 
" English point of view," covers the period of 1325-1377. 

A change of heart now brings him under the influence of Gui 
de Blois, whose family and sympathies were French. The 
curacy at Lestinnes is exchanged for a canonship at Chimai, and 
about 1390 Froissart becomes Gui's private chaplain. Under 
the latter's inspiration he published a " French revision " of his 
Chroniques; and to this he soon added a second book, embodying 
the disturbances in Flanders, which he himself had witnessed. 
Once more he sets his sail to the wind, and provided with letters 
from his new patron he visits the court of the renowned Gaston 
de Foix in Gascony. This visit, recorded about 1390 in the third 
book, is the most vivid of Froissart 's many experiences. At the 
same time he is busy on his fourth and last book. However, in 
1394 the truce signed between France and England arouses in 
him the desire to revisit the scenes of his youthful triumphs, and 
he readily accepts the invitation of Richard II to pass three 
months at the English Court. Although flattered by the recep- 
tion given him, Froissart is not blinded to Richard's misrule and 
leaves England abruptly in order to complete his fourth book. 
This recounts the beginning of the Civil Wars and ends abruptly 
with the abdication and death of the English King. 

During his last ten years Froissart revised once more the first 
book of his Chroniques, adding an attack on the English people 
and an elegy on Richard. His owm death is wrapped in mystery 
— the tradition is that he died at Chimai, destitute and bereft 
of friends. 

Obviously, Froissart is an historian, " double d'un romancier " 
as the French say. With his poetry we shall deal elsewhere; 
it shares in the learned sophistications of his contemporaries. 
But it may be said of all his w r ork that the pageantry of life 
made a far deeper impression upon him than did the hidden mo- 
tives of human action. It is characteristic that in England the 
translation of the Chroniques in 1523-1525 became a rich source 
of dramatic inspiration. Froissart has the " curiosity " of the 
French, but he lacks their attachment to ideas. At bottom he is 



78 HISTORY AND STORIOLOGY 

a Fleming, artistic, fond of color, sensual and essentially unmoral. 
His divided allegiance may be pardoned since he depended on the 
favor of patrons and was neither French nor English by birth. 
Moreover, his social background was, so to speak, Arthurian ; and 
the tilt and tournament were part of the atmosphere he breathed. 
What is harder to understand is " his incurable optimism, his 
innate contentment in the face of so much shame and suffering, 
of so many crimes and outrages left unpunished " (Lanson) . 
Persuaded that all heroism and virtue consist in " adventure," 
Froissart represents his century in terms of an interminable 
feat of arms, the brilliant facets of which delight the eye but 
confound the reason. If this be chivalry, then chivalry has come 
to a sad pass: a tinkling cymbal and an empty name. 

Nevertheless, the stream of life flows strong in the pages of 
this prince of chroniclers. The battles of Crecy and Poitiers will 
live forever in the glowing colors in which he has set them forth. 
In prose that was then unmatched for its lucidity and flow he 
gave to the great families of Europe the first worthy narrative 
of their illustrious deeds. That the English, on the whole, fare 
better in his pages than the French is due to fortune, not to 
prejudice. With due allowance for his aristocratic leanings he 
had genuine admiration for those " povres brigans," who " s'en 
allant par voies couvertes " waylay the rich and gain their lives 
by pillaging castles and cities, for their valor is the equal of any. 
And who, having read them, can forget the admirable speech of 
Aymerigot Marches on the adventurous life of the past or the 
insolent words of Jean Chandos challenging his adversary? 
Froissart had a good ear, a retentive memory and the gift of 
drawing men out. He wished to be an echo, says Gaston Paris, 
" mais il est le plus sonore et le plus fidele des echos." 

The writing of history, however, is only one of the manifesta- 
tions of the " learned " thirteenth century. The monastic schools 
Didactic of tne preceding age were now followed by the rise 

Literature of the universities (by 1200, Orleans is competing 
with Paris, "Bologna and Toledo), and this in turn led to the 
vulgarization of a vast body of didactic literature. We have 
the great Dante's word that because of her " easier and more 
agreeable vulgar-tongue " France is also the home of works of a 
learned character. Witness the Italian, Brunetto Latini, who 



DIDACTIC TREATISES 79 

in 1265 wrote his famous Tresor in French prose. But the didac- 
tic spirit is abroad among the French long before this date. And 
here it was the Normans (many of them in England), with their 
practical sense, caring more for fact than for poetry, who 
took the lead. It was among the Normans that the Physiologus, 
used as a text-book on natural history, was first put into 
French, that parts of the Bible were translated, and that the 
learned spirit generally was fostered and promulgated. On this 
foundation the thirteenth century built. In numerous " lapi- 
daries," " bestiaries " and " calendars " the allegorizing method 
is applied to the realm of Nature. In compendia of various 
kinds, sommes, bibles, images du monde or mappemondes, in- 
formation of every sort, fantastic and real, is arranged and codi- 
fied. In the form of chastiements, doctrinaux or enseignements, 
the age embodies its laws of behavior and its views on education. 

Plentiful as these works are, few of them reveal any superior 
talent or can be ranked as literature. Rarely do they give an 
insight into the larger questions of human life. The great prob- 
lem of scholastic philosophy — the relation of ideas (universalia) 
to facts (res) , on which the master minds of Anselm and Abelard 
were engaged — does not get down into the vernacular, for not 
until Descartes (seventeenth century) is philosophy written in 
French. The sources of scientific knowledge were of course 
books: treatises which like Aristotle's Organon, Solinus' Geog- 
raphy, the Latin versions of the late Greek Physiologus, had sur- 
vived the blight of the early Christian era, to be overlaid with 
a mass of commentary. Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy, 
translated into Provengal as early as the tenth century, was a 
stock theme of exegesis down to the threshold of the Renaissance. 
The books of travel due to pilgrims and crusaders, however rich 
in detail, were insignificant as to matter or based on hearsay and 
therefore fanciful. But the greatest obstacle to enlightenment 
was the church dogma (see Ch. I) that since truth is " revealed " 
it is the purpose of science to " understand," not to " investigate," 
the universe. 

Let us not forget, however, that Latin, and not French, was the 
medieval language of scholarship. Thus, if we include theology, 
the greatest of the medieval " sciences," the minds of the time 
were not only active — they were encyclopedic. Here, as else- 



80 HISTORY AND STORIOLOGY 

where in matters of culture, France was the leader as well as the 
disseminator. In the Summa Theologia of her " universal doc- 
tor," St. Thomas Aquinas x (1225-1274) , she gave to the medieval 
fixity its final form. In this way, the implements of the reason 
(if not reason itself), logic, grammar, rhetoric, are sharpened 
and controlled as never before. So, too, a fresh impulse is given 
to mathematics, together with its complementary art, music. 
All this made for expression, in the vernacular as well as in 
Latin; but for its formal or dialectic elements, structure and 
style, not content or thought. 

How sophisticated and yet naive medieval science could be is 
seen in the works of Philippe de Thaon, an Anglo-Norman writer 
Natural °^ the cour ^ of Henry I (early twelfth century). 

History In six- and then eight-syllable verse Philip wrote a 

Comput, a Bestiaire and a Lapidaire. His style, says M. Lan- 
glois, " est d'une indigence, d'une nullite et d'une gaucherie sans 
pareilles." Yet Philip aims to instruct the clergy, whose ig- 
norance moves him to compassion. In the Comput he treats 
after Bede and John of Garlande the ins-and-outs of the ecclesi- 
astical calendar: the days, months, church festivals, equinoxes, 
solstices, and so forth. For all these arid themes he points a 
moral lesson. For instance, he derives the word August from 
Lat. gustus, and since God is " pur gustement " it follows that 
August signifies God. The same kind of reasoning is typical 
of the Bestiaire and the Lapidaire. The former follows the 
Physiologus in allegorizing animals: the lion with his large head 
and comparatively small body represents " Jhesu filz de Marie"; 
if the pelican opens her breast to feed her young this action is 
symbolic of the Saviour: 

par le sane precius 

que Des (Dieu) laissat pur nus 

— as centuries later Musset made it a symbol of the poet. 
The Lapidaire puts into French the Latin version of a work by 
Damigeron, a first-century Greek. Here Philip dwells on the 
curative value of certain minerals and gives short directions for 
their use — another testimony to medieval credulity. 

Other bestiaries were composed in the Middle Ages. In the tfair- 

1 Thomas Aquinas (d' Aquino) was an Italian, but he studied and taught in 
Paris. 



BRUNETTO LATINI 81 

teenth century, Richard de Fournival, Cliancellor of Amiens, had 
the fantastic idea of celebrating his lady in a Bestiaire d'amour-. 
Richard's subtleties are in prose, but they were easily turned 
into verse. As for lapidaries, numerous translations into various 
European languages testify to the vogue of a Latin lapidary by 
Marbode, Bishop of Rennes (eleventh century). All of these 
works, however, vary in character but slightly from Philip's, 
which may thus be considered typical of the genre. 

A good illustration of the medieval encyclopedia is the Image 
du monde (about 1245) by Gautier de Metz. Preserved in many 
Encyclo- manuscripts with handsome miniatures, this poem of 
pedias eleven thousand verses aims to embrace all creation, 

including geography and astronomy. Here the sensation-loving 
layman would receive food for his imagination, together with 
considerable moral edification. The work gives some facts, but 
on the whole it abounds in descriptions of fanciful lands, 
unheard-of monsters, and treasures of stupendous value. The 
majority of images were a similar bait for the unwary. One, 
however, has a distinct literary and cultural value. This is the 
Lime du Tresor (1265), by the Florentine Brunetto Latini, mas- 
ter of Dante. As we have said, he wrote his treatise in French 
because (to quote his exact words) this " parleure est plus deli- 
table et plus commune a toutes gens." Knowledge, which Bru- 
netto compared to the small change which we daily spend, is, he 
says, necessary in life. Accordingly, in three long books he runs 
through the gamut of the knowable. Today the interesting part 
of the treatise is the section on politics. Here Brunetto has col- 
lected some real information, with finely drawn distinctions, on 
national and civil government in France and Italy. But it is 
the language which constitutes the noteworthy trait of the 
Tresor. Brunetto, whom Alain Chartier later compared to Livy, 
writes better French than many a native Frenchman. His 
style is clear and succinct, and remarkably idiomatic. The 
Tresor enjoyed a long and merited popularity and was twice 
translated into Italian. 

Moral precepts, akin to the type still current in the " Letters 
The Chas- °f a Father to his Son," are embodied in the chastie- 
tiements merit. This genre began with the Chastiement d'un 
plre a son fils, which is a twelfth-century verse translation of 



82 HISTORY AND STORIOLOGY 

the Disciplina clericalis by the Spanish Jew, Petrus Alphonsus. 
The educational features of the work are secondary, however, to 
the tales or exempla with which the discussion is illustrated. 
Indeed, this feature is what saved much medieval edification 
from oblivion. In the course of time, a large body of such tales, 
derived chiefly from the Orient, found their way into the vernac- 
ular and served not only to instruct but also to entertain and 
amuse. We have observed the fact in dealing with the " fable " 
(Ch. Ill) and we shall have occasion to mention it again. 

A chastiement of genuine educational value is the prose work, 
Des quatre d'aage d'home (about 1270), by Philippe de Novaire 
(Novara). Here the moralizing tone yields to the mellow re- 
flections of old age. Philip wrote at the close of an adventurous 
career. His Gestes des Chiprois, giving an account of the tragic 
struggle of Cyprus against Frederick II, was in the nature of a 
memoir; this is followed by the chastiement as an essay on wis- 
dom. Philip deals at some length with the various " ages " of 
man, but dwells particularly on the age of childhood, about 
which he makes several telling observations. 

On the other hand, the Chastiement des dames (about 1250) , 
by Robert de Blois, is filled with a didacticism of a purely 
worldly type. Written in verse, this work is a veritable manual 
on courtesy for the noble ladies of Robert's time. Many of the 
instructions given are of course commonplace; others, however, 
are quite characteristic — as, for example, the precept that a 
lady should always love secretly (celeement) or her reputation 
will be at stake. In exalted, almost religious verse, Robert in- 
tones the praise of courtoisie, bien parler and douce acointance, 
which are the sterling traits of a woman's education. Obviously, 
he follows Ovid, but never slavishly. 

A more serious type of moral treatise is inaugurated by the 
Livre des manieres of Etienne de Fougeres (1170) — at one 
time chaplain of Henry II of England. The anonymous Poeme 
moral (thirteenth century) incorporates in its moralizing the 
legend of Thais. For the most part, however, such works are 
satirical. Their animus against certain classes grows more and 
more violent until in the so-called Roman de charite, by Bar- 
thelemy de Molliens (thirteenth century), the somberness of the 
author's picture holds out little hope for the ideals for which the 
Middle Ages once stood. 



HENRI d'ANDELI 83 

We may fittingly close this section on didactic literature with 
a glance at the Bataille des sept arts (after 1235) by the cele- 
brated trouvere, Henri d'Andeli. In form this work 

The Ba- 

taiiie des belongs to the genre of verse-dispute or debat de- 
sept arts " r } vec | f rom i a ^ e Latin literature. A typical example 
is the Debat de Vhiver et de Fete, which embodies the im- 
memorial theme of the conflict of the seasons. The appellation 
bataille — and there are other works of this name — was inspired 
by the Psychomachia of the poet Prudentius (fourth century), 
in which a battle of the virtues and vices is narrated. But 
Henry's poem transcends the limits of a mere genre. Henry is 
one of the enlightened spirits of the thirteenth century. He has 
individuality, grasp and variety of idea, and skill in statement. 
Like the later seventeenth century, the medieval period had its 
quarrel as to the relative merits of the ancients and moderns. 
It was Henry's distinction to stand up for the classics and de- 
fend Orleans against Paris, where, he says, " students care for 
naught except to read books on nature": 

Et li arciens n'ont mes cure 
Lire fors livres de nature. 

In eight- syllable couplets Henry marshals the representatives of 
" literature " (grammaire) against the converts to " dialectics " 
{logique). But in vain; the former are worsted, and the poem 
closes on the despairing note that " the times are given to empti- 
ness " and only a new generation can restore culture to its true 
status. Henry was over-sanguine; the culture he had in mind 
had to await the appearance of Petrarch, and even then the new 
humanism made its way slowly in France. But through its 
emphasis on the classics Henry's poem heralds the Renaissance. 
From every point of view it is a cultural document of the first 
rank. 

No picture of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries could be 
complete without a reference to the vast body of floating contes, 

dits, fabliaux and lais in which the age delighted. 

Moralizing and instructive, or purely imaginative 
or ironical, these stories often have no special hall-mark, are 
addressed to no particular class, and must be assigned to the field 
of general European folklore. This, however, does not preclude 



84 HISTORY AND STORIOLOGY 

the fact that many such tales may be of individual French inven- 
tion; nor does the group embrace the large class of Oriental 
stories which came into Western Europe directly through the 
crusades and the Saracen domination in Spain. 

The " fable " and the romantic lai we treated above (Chs. II 
and III). As for the fabliau or fablel, it is defined by M. 

The Fabliau B * dieT &S * " C ° nte * lire en Vers> " The shor test 
DitandConte has ei § hteen verses > the longest thirteen hundred. 
Essentially anecdotes by nature, the fabliaux are 
akin to the gabs or boasts which are told in some forms of the 
Old French epic. The fabliau of Barat et Hairnet, which a 
certain Jean Bodel set to verse in the thirteenth century, has 
also been recorded in Armenia and Albania. 

Thus, universal and perennial as stories, the fabliaux flourished 
particularly in the thirteenth century, when they supplanted more 
and more the lais of the preceding age. Reflecting the ironic, 
bourgeois spirit, they were well fitted to make a person while 
away an idle moment on a long journey or at an inn. In fact, 
one of the most amusing, Les deux bordeors (jesters) ribauz, 
recounts the "half-clumsy, half-satiric boasts of two members 
of the order, who misquote the titles of their repertoire, make 
by accident or intention ironic comments on its contents " and 
thus show that their wit cuts both ways. 

In short, the fabliau ridicules society. It is brief, to the point, 
and effective. It strikes at the priestly class, as title after 
title shows, dethrones the lofty heroine of romance, and pictures 
the " real and practical, not the ideal or sentimental." One of 
the earliest and best examples of the genre is Richeut. This is 
the story of a courtesan who together with her son and servant 
plies her unsavory trade among various classes and in this way 
furthers her own and her offspring's career. Certain traits re- 
mind the modern reader of Manon Lescaut — except that the un- 
known author is neither a sentimentalist nor a cynic but a cool 
observer of brutal fact. Most fabliaux, however, deal less with 
a situation than with a traditional theme. Such is the so-called 
Lai d'Aristote, by Henri, d'Andeli, which repeats the age-old plot 
of the scholar duped by a woman; or the Vilain Mire, which 
furnished the basis of Moliere's comedy, Le Medecin malgre lui; 
or Le Man qui fist sa femme confesse, whence La Fontaine ex- 



FABLIAUX AND EXEMPLA 85 

traoted his Chevalier confesseur, and so on. Thus by means 
of the fabliau the "real world" in the Middle Ages jostles 
and elbows the courtly and the fanciful. Many a story of 
Boccaccio is but a fabliau retold; and how lacking in contrasts 
would be the Canterbury Tales if Chaucer had not seen fit to 
make use of the genre! 

But not all fabliaux are ironical or satirical. Or rather the 
genre is not always distinguishable from the dit and the conte. 
The dit, in particular, is supposed to point a moral lesson. It is 
characteristic of all these compositions, however, that they deal 
with " ordinary life " and are to the point. Thus La Housse 
partie (" The Saddlecloth Divided into Portions,") — a fabliau — 
has an ethical purpose; namely, to show the dangers of filial in- 
gratitude. A special class is perhaps the contes devote, similar 
in spirit to the pious Miracles (in this case, legends) de la sainte 
vierge by Gautier de Coincy. Such a one is the Dit dou vrai 
aniel (" The Parable of the True Ring") , an eastern tale retold by 
Boccaccio and later embodied in Lessing's drama, Nathan der 
Weise; or the charming Tombeor Nostre Dame, which Mas- 
senet has put into opera. In the first of these the theme is 
philosophical ; in the second it is lyric — in the best sense. 

Finally, the edifying spirit reigns in the Latin exempla or 
parables with which the medieval preacher embellished his ser- 
The Exempla m ons. These are mainly of Arabic — indirectly, 
and Oriental of Sanskrit — origin and are preserved in such col- 
lections as that of Jacques de Vitry (before 1240) 
or the Disciplina clericalis, mentioned above. The Arabian 
Nights did not reach France until the eighteenth century, yet the 
Oriental plan of setting a group of stories in a framework is 
found as early as 1155 in the Roman des sept sages — which 
existed in a host of European versions. This work was planned 
to set forth certain traits which the Brahmins thought youth 
should guard against. Here a young prince is rescued from the 
treachery of his step-mother by seven wise men, each of whom 
delays the prince's execution by telling a story. In a similar 
way, an account of the Buddha, turned into a Christian Greek 
legend in the sixth century, found its way into Latin and thence 
into French. Of this Barlaam et Josaphat there are three 
French rimed-versions (the last about 1250), which tell how 



86 HISTORY AND STORIOLOGY 

Barlaam (originally the Buddha) converts Josaphat to Chris- 
tianity, largely through the influence of Oriental stories skill- 
fully adapted for the purpose. 

Here our sketch of medieval storiology ends. As to form, be 
it noted that by the fifteenth century the French verse-tale dis- 
appears, on the one hand, into the prose conte, and on the other, 
into the farce, a type of the drama. The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles 
(1461) show the influence of the Italian novella and are the 
direct forerunners of our modern short-stories. As we observed 
in the case of the Flamenca (Ch. II), the Provencals had used 
the word novas for narrative fiction, but without any distinction 
between its longer and its shorter forms. 




tutfctmti foimt mfoBteMunt |fejj^ ; 



ftiaflfe cmrrt nicttixai mw 

fm&ctaitailktntfi i fcmictw 9 

ccCitwcquc tayawwvwtac 

Jeywffewitinimrctpctfaiaxr 

mttle'ituMtiax-qfici»u$ catty 

<mi (c Cuvnt fcrwntct ozvout 



Illustration from Froissart's Chroniques (Fifteenth Century Manuscript) 



BOOK II 
THE BOURGEOIS INFLUENCE 

CHAPTER I 

THE LYRIC POETS OF THE SCHOOL OF 
MACHAUT AND DESCHAMPS 

We have now come to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, 
which, as we noted above (Bk. I, Ch. I), represent the Middle 
French period, as distinguished from the Middle Ages proper. 

Politically this was an age of hesitation, not to say, of dis- 
integration. The Valois princes, who came to the throne in 
Th M'ddl 132 ^' have ^ e trappings of chivalry, but their love 
French of display and luxury is out of all keeping with the 

Period rea j m isery of the times. The retinue of minor kings 

and nobles surrounding them is often brilliant ; especially in such 
persons as John of Luxemburg who, though ruler of Bohemia, 
kept open house in Paris, where his gaiety became proverbial. 
The fact is that feudalism is tottering, and such examples are 
prophetic of its fall. The political security it once gave is lost 
in the Hundred Years' War (between France and England) , and 
as in the case of Froissart, " fealty " has become a matter of 
convenience, to be treated lightly according to one's self-interest. 
The great nobles still respond to the glamour of feudal life, but 
they have long wearied of its obligations. The terrific struggle 
(1405-1421) for the control of the crown, between Louis of 
Orleans and John Without-Fear, of Burgundy, is indicative of 
this fact. At last the monarchy is forced to seek other means 
of support; and these it finds in the great cities among the 
rapidly rising merchant class. Here Artois and Flanders, cen- 
ters of the textile arts, Lyons at the head of the Rhone Valley, 
and Rouen with the commerce of the Seine at her feet, were of 

87 



88 THE LYRIC POETS 

great importance. With an instinct close to genius, Louis XI 
(1461-1483) worked for the future of France by his control of 
the feudal barons. And, finally, with the Renaissance, when 
national unity is achieved, its mainstay is an enterprising and 
self-reliant bourgeoisie. 

The effect of this period on literature is reactionary rather than 
progressive. Here and there the gleam of a new humanism 
shines forth, especially during the reign of Charles V, in the 
works of Pierre Bercuire and Nicolas Oresme, in imitations of 
Boccaccio and to a less degree of Petrarch. But, in the main, 
the attempts at innovation are abortive or in any case super- 
ficial ; and the older literary forms continue, mannered and flam- 
boyant in response to Italian and Flemish influences, but other- 
wise changing little. One fact, however, is noteworthy. The 
great lord who has his own library, and the bourgeois now a 
client of the jongleur, insist on the portrayal of their opinions and 
their emotions; and these are anything but poetic. The result 
is a sharp contrast between form and thought ; the poets consume 
their efforts in seeking new and striking effects, and to represent 
an idea by the image most foreign to it becomes the rule of rules. 
A Songe du Vergier clothes a treatise on politics; Le roi Modus 
et la reine Ratio is a manual on falconry. Hence, most of the 
poetry is a labyrinth of allegory framed to a purpose for which 
it was never intended. And it is significant that the art of 
poetry — the technique of which now becomes the serious con- 
sideration of the puys (see above) — is officially termed rheto- 
rique and the poet assumes the ominous name of a faiseur. In 
this way, the formal elements of the Middle Ages survived long 
after the time when the spirit that produced them had fled. 

Meanwhile, the French language itself is undergoing a marked 
change. Many learned words derived from the classics come 
to enrich the vocabulary. Not at once, but certainly by the 
close of the fifteenth century, the feminine e ceases to be sounded 
before other vowels: veil is reduced to vu; further, the diph- 
thong oi acquires the sound of we or e or wa, and most of the 
final consonants become silent. Above all, the language loses 
all but the last vestige of case-forms in the merging of the 
nominative and the oblique (thus on and homme, both derived 
from Latin homo, continue not as separate cases but as distinct 



MACHAUT 89 

words) ; and the sentence structure of Modern French, less 
flexible but far clearer than that of Old French, is inaugurated. 
In short, the fourteenth and the fifteenth centuries are the 
bridge between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, between 
the age of faith and the age of reason. On the political and cul- 
tural side, the period is marked by the decay of feudalism and by 
the rise of the township and the bourgeois spirit. Intellectually, 
the beginnings of humanism are apparent ; sporadically, however, 
and then only as a veneer. As for literature, it flows prevail- 
ingly in the former channels; where there is a revival, as in the 
lyric, the tendency is toward a polished and involved form — 
the ballade and the rondeau are supreme, like the sonnet later 
on — and poetic expression is artificial, complicated, or only 
" graceful," like the Gothic architecture of the time. On the 
other hand, the point of view is more and more personal and 
autobiographic, and as regards the one genius of the age, Fran- 
Qois Villon, it is strikingly modern. 

The founder of the poetic school of the fourteenth century is 
Guillaume de Machaut (about 1300-1377). In acknowledging 
this fact, we need not go the length of Rene of Anjou, 
who gave him a place above Petrarch and Boccaccio, 
although Chaucer's imitation of him in the Book of the Duchess 
is in itself high praise. He was born in Champagne and early 
entered the service of John of Luxemburg, who took him to Ger- 
many, Austria, Italy and even Russia. After John's death on 
the field of Crecy, Guillaume found a new patron in the Dauphin, 
the future Charles V, and had leisure for literature. Others who 
supported his pen were Charles of Navarre, for whom he wrote 
a Jugement and the Confort d'ami, and the famous Pierre de 
Lusignan, whose exploits he celebrated in the Prise d'Alexandrie. 

But Guillaume's true vein lay in the shorter genres, the bal- 
lade and the lyric lai. Artificial as these are in his treatment, 
their preciosity is redeemed by the alliance of verse to music, 
a feature which Guillaume developed, and by marked dexterity 
in the detail of expression. In the Livre du voir-dit (about 
1363) Guillaume has collected the best of his lyric experience. 

Made up of the shorter forms, such as ballades, lais, rondels, 
this work purports to be the amorous exchange of the aging poet 



90 THE LYRIC POETS 

and the young and charming Peronelle d'Armentieres. In fact, 
the work has been called the " journal amoureux du quatorzieme 
siecle," but for all that the exchange may have been a poetic 
fiction. In any case, the Voir-dit reveals to perfection the gal- 
lant love-making of the time. Guillaume plays gracefully with 
his passion until the inevitable happens: Peronelle deserts 
him for another, and the poet consoles himself with an avowal 
of friendship. Thus the work has the outward semblance of a 
novel. 

Guillaume 's best remembered short poem is probably the 
following rondel or triolet: 

Blanche com lys, plus que rose vermeille, 
Resplendissant com rubis d'oriant, 
En remirant vo biaute non pareille, 
Blanche com lys, plus que rose vermeille, 
Suy si ravis que mes cuers toudis veille 
Afin que serve, a loy de fin amant, 
Blanche com lys, plus que rose vermeille, 
Resplendissant com rubis d'oriant. 

White as a lily, rosier than the roses red, 
Outshining far the ruby of the East! 
To see your peerless beauty being led — 
White as a lily, rosier than the roses red — 
So charmed am I straightway my heart is sped 
Humbty to serve you where true love holds feast. 
White as a lily, rosier than the roses red, 
Outshining far the ruby of the East! 

Guillaume's pupil and friend was Eustache Deschamps (about 
1340-1405), who bewailed the former's death in harmonious 
Deschamps words : 

Tous instrumens 1'ont complaint et ploure, 
Musique a fait son obseque et ses plours, 
Et Orpheus a le cors enterre. 

Deschamps, who wrote some eleven hundred ballades, was the 
lawgiver of the school and composed an Art de dictier et fere 
chansons, etc., the first treatise of its kind (in French) that has 
come down to us. Yet he differed much from Guillaume in 
character and temperament. A frequenter of taverns and the 



DESCHAMPS AND FROISSART 91 

common people, Eustache had an aversion for the rich and high- 
placed. This attitude led him to write a Miroir de manage in 
which he jeers at women and the abuses of the courtly world. 
But he was not courageous enough to abjure the artificiality 
of verse and write in the more suitable medium of prose. 
Deschamps lacked taste, and voluminous as his output was, it is 
often dull and incoherent. At the same time, he is capable of 
occasional lapidary effects and a manly and personal accent 
that does him credit. He stood in personal relations with 
Chaucer, to whom his sturdy character appealed and to whose 
genius Deschamps does homage in a well-known ballade, with 
the refrain: 

Grant translateur, noble Geoffrey Chaucier. 

Another poet whom Chaucer imitated is Froissart. Justly 
famous for his prose Chroniques (see above, Bk. I, Ch. IV), 
Froissart also composed various light forms of 
Froissart ver s ej a s well as the Paradis d* amour — the work 
which Chaucer used — and the tiresome Arthurian romance, 
Meliador. Passing through Avignon, he was stupid enough to 
allow himself to be robbed of two florins given him by Gaston 
de Foix. This untoward event he bewails gracefully in the Dit 
dou florin, which thus remains a good index of his lighter verse. 
A courtier by instinct, Froissart is less stilted than most of his 
contemporaries, and he achieves greater unity of thought and 
expression. One of his characteristic rondels — On doit le temps 
ensi prendre qu'il vient — has been charmingly translated by 
Longfellow : 

Take time while yet it is in view, 
For fortune is a fickle fair: 
Days fade, and others spring anew; 
Then take the moment still in view. 
What boots to toil and cares pursue? 
Each month a new moon hangs in air. 
Take, then, the moment still in view, 
For fortune is a fickle fair. 

As we approach the fifteenth century, the outstanding figures 
in poetry are Christine de Pisan, Alain Chartier and the royal 
poet, Charles d'Orleans. 



92 THE LYRIC POETS 

Time has dealt rudely with the fame of Christine de Pisan. 
An Italian by birth, she yet was once considered one of the 
Christine glories of France. In general, she is remarkable for 
de Pisan her knowledge and her ideas, and the tragedy of 
her life again and again infuses her writing with lyrical feeling 
— although she cannot escape the allegorizing fashion of her age. 

Christine was born in Venice (1364) and not, as her name 
might suggest, in Pisa or Pezzano. Her father, Thomas de 
Pezano, a scholar of Bologna, took his family to France, whither 
he had been called as physician and astrologer to Charles V. 
While Charles lived the family fortunes of the Pezanos flourished, 
Christine received an excellent education and was married young 
and advantageously to a Picard gentleman, Estienne de Castel. 
But fortune plays strange tricks, and after a few years of happi- 
ness Christine lost not only her husband and her father but 
through litigation and debt much of her property. With a 
fortitude unusual in her youth and sex, she braved the insolence 
of law-courts and the injustice of the world, and rescued what 
little she could from the family disaster. Her real help, and 
incidentally her consolation, was her writing. After the battle 
of Agincourt she retired more and more from the world, and 
finally took religious orders. She died in 1429, shortly after 
celebrating in song Joan of Arc, whose triumph she had lived 
to see. 

Besides her early lyrics and the poems in which she defended 
her sex against the attack of Jean de Meun (Bk. I, Ch. Ill), 
Christine left three poems of a meditative nature: the Mutacion 
de Fortune, the Chemin de lorig estude and a so-called Vision. 
She also wrote a prose Life of Charles V for his successor, in 
which her hero's courage, chevalerie and sag esse are proved by 
illustration. 

All of these works (barring perhaps the last) have a marked 
personal touch ; a good part of them indeed is out-and-out auto- 
biography. Of the shorter lyrics, the ballades, forming a kind of 
sequence in the manuscripts, are among the best. Note the bal- 
lade beginning: 

Seulete sui et seulete vueil estre, 
Seulete m'a mon douz ami laissiee; 
Seulete sui, sanz compaignon ne maistre, 
Seulete sui, dolente et courrouciee. 



CHRISTINE DE PISAN 93 

Seulete sui, en langueur mesaisiee, 
Seulete sui, plus que nulle esgaree, 
Seulete sui, sanz ami demouree. 

Alone am I, alone I wish to be, 

Alone my sweetest friend hath left me here, 

Alone am I, in my sole company, 

Alone in sorrow bent, and without cheer. 

Alone am I in languorous disgrace, 

Alone far more than wanderer from God's grace, 

Alone, without a friend, the world I face. 

Or another, which reveals Christine's classical reading: 

Ovid relates a messenger there is 
Who sleeping bears his tidings unto men, 
Making them dream, and in their dreams, I wys, 
See joy and sorrow to the full again, etc. 

Taking her title from Dante — Vagliami il lungo studio — 
she relates in the Chemin de long estude how Almathea, the Cu- 
mean sibyl, leads her after various wanderings to the fifth 
heaven. Thither Earth has sent a messenger to ask Reason 
where the perfect man can be found. Nobility, Riches, Chivalry 
and Wisdom take part in the discussion, and the question- — 
unanswerable as it is — is left for a decision to the King of 
France to whom Christine is dispatched as an ambassador. 
Thereupon Christine awakes to find that she has been dreaming. 
The other two philosophical poems are of the same general char- 
acter as the first. The Mutation de Fortune throws light on the 
author's early life and education, while the third part of the 
Vision, inspired largely by Boethius, abounds in philosophizing 
on life and stresses a strict adherence to duty as the only road 
to happiness. 

Thus Christine's traits are a firm grasp of moral values, a 
quick and broad sympathy, and a learning quite out of the or- 
dinary. In her day Christine was an enlightening force which 
slowly but emphatically cleared the way for the Renaissance. 

Compared to this " virile " woman, the so-called " father of 
French letters " at first seems a weakling. Son of a bourgeois 
Alain °f Bayeux, who was a pillar of the state, Alain 

Cnartier Chartier (1394-1440) early prepared for a life at 
court and for literature. In the Esperance des trois vertus he 



94 THE LYRIC POETS 

mentions Homer, Virgil, Livy, Horace, Statius and Lucan. To 
this substantial knowledge must be added Cicero and Seneca — 
whose vogue Alain began — and among the moderns, Brunetto 
Latini, Dante and Boccaccio. The legend, circulated in the 
sixteenth century, that Margaret of Scotland, finding the poet 
asleep, kissed the lips that had framed such beautiful verse, is 
probably an invention. But Alain was skillful, and besides 
maintaining himself in the royal favor — Charles VI sent him on 
diplomatic missions — he wrote in the court manner. 

In one of his early works, the Livre des quatre dames, each of 
whom had lost a suitor at Agincourt, Alain shows how vapid was 
the period in its hopeless neglect of the real woes of France. 
Similarly, the Lay de Plaisance and the famous Belle Dame sans 
merci reveal the same indifference to the horrors wrought by 
Orleanists and Burgundians. It has often been said that this 
callousness is conventional. In any case, the Belle Dame fulfills 
all the sophisticated rules of gallantry. Can one die of love? 
The heartless lady thinks not; the lover dies and thus disproves 
her point. Could stilted artifice go further? Yet the poem 
was translated into English by a follower of Chaucer, in part- 
as follows: 

Full oftentimes to speak himself he pained, 
But shamefasteness and drede said ever nay, 
Yet at the last, so sore he was constrained 
When he full long had put it in delay, 
To his lady right thus than gan he say, 
With dredeful voice, weeping, half in a rage; 
" For me was purueyed an unhappy day, 
When I first had a sight of your visage!" 

Fortunately, Alain's fame does not rest on his verse. It was 
his prose, modeled on that of Seneca, which dazzled his contem- 
poraries and made him a classic to the sixteenth century. 
Among other admirers, Etienne Pasquier speaks of " les mots 
dorez et belles sentences de Maistre Alain Chartier." Marot also 
mentions him with praise. 

Le Quadrildgue invectif (1422) is the most important of Alain's 
prose works. The three estates, the nobility, the clergy and the 
people, debate with France on the crying abuses of the time. 
The clergy, acting as judge between the other orders, is particu- 



ALAIN CHARTIER 95 

larly severe on the nobles and accuses them of sacrificing the 
country to their own lawlessness. Alain's style is grave, periodic, 
sententious. In an argument rising occasionally to eloquence he 
preaches the destruction of feudalism and pleads for a national 
army in which royalty and people shall unite. The Quadrilogue 
is the earliest work to treat feudalism unsparingly. A satire on 
the life of the courtier, Le Curial, is less convincing in its invec- 
tive ; but the Esperance des trois vertus — composed in the tenth 
year of Alain's exile from the capital (1429), whence he had 
been driven by the Burgundian faction — again strikes a clarion 
note. Here the poet blames the church openly for her temporiz- 
ing attitude: the triumph of evil on earth is to a large extent her 
work. Nevertheless, the poet is confident that France will some 
day rise against her foes, foreign and domestic, and crush them. 
This work, in which prose and verse are intermingled, contains 
some of Alain's best imitations of Seneca and approaches the 
prose oratoire of a later day. 

Within this book of my thought 
The tale of my heart is related, 
The grief of my soul can be sought 
With tears illuminated! 

So sang Charles d'Orleans (1391-1465). the last exponent of the 
graces and refinements of chivalry. His life falls into three 
Charles periods of almost equal length. The son of Louis 

d'Orleans f Orleans and Valentine of Milan, from both of 
whom he inherited the love of art and letters, his first twenty- 
five years were spent amid the ruin of the Hundred Years' War 
and the enmity of Burgundy and Orleans. He was educated at 
Blois and married (at the age of fifteen) his cousin. Isabella of 
France, the widow of Richard II of England. In 1407 his 
father was murdered at the instigation of John Without-Fear, 
and his mother and his wife died barely a year after. For seven 
years, with the aid of the Armagnacs, he waged continuous war- 
fare against the Burgundian faction, relieved by occasional but 
momentary truces. In 1415 he was captured by the English at 
Agincourt and taken to England a prisoner. The next twenty- 
five years — his second period — he languished in captivity. It 
was then that most of his poetry was written. Released on con- 



96 THE LYRIC POETS 

dition that he make peace with Burgundy — and the grace with 
which he accepted these terms lives in the words he addressed 
to the Duchess of Burgundy: 

Madame, vu ce que vous avez fait pour ma delivranee, 
il est juste que je me rende votre prisonnier — 

he married Marie de Cleves and settled down to a life of artistic 
enjoyment at Blois. During this, his third, period he gave to 
the poetry of chivalry a brief but brilliant afterglow, and he died 
gladdened by the thought that his infant son was destined to 
mount the throne of France as Louis XII. 

As his recent biographer points out, there is in the poetry of 
Charles d'Orleans a note that recalls at once Petrarch and Heine. 
Of the one he has the longing, of the other the intimacy, while 
he has the tenderness of both. But he undoubtedly lacks their 
penetration and force, and despite his own experience the tragedy 
of life affected him little. To rank him with Villon — his con- 
temporary and friend — is to compare a reed with an oak. 

His poems fall into two groups: those written in captivity — 
of which a number were translated into English — and those 
composed after Charles' return to France. The first group, the 
so-called Livre de la Prison, imitates, in narrative interspersed 
with ballades, the allegory of the Roman de la Rose. The second, 
containing the standard lyric forms, again celebrates " love," 
but it also represents the progress of the poet's experience : daily 
occurrences, anniversaries, May-festivals, and so on. Charles 
excels in crystallizing such details, in making the fleeting perma- 
nent. The famous rondeau: 

Le temps a laissie son manteau 
De vent, de froidure et de pluye, 

is in all anthologies and has been beautifully rendered by Andrew 
Lang: 

The year has changed his mantle cold 

Of wind, of rain, of bitter air; 

And he goes clad in cloth of gold, 

Of laughing suns and seasons fair; 

No bird or beast of wood or wold 

But doth with cry or song declare 

The year lays down his mantle cold. 



CHARLES D'ORLEANS 97 

All founts, all rivers, seaward rolled, 
The pleasant summer livery wear, 
With silver studs on broidered vair; 
The world puts off its raiment old, 
The year lays down his mantle cold. 

But again, Charles was indifferent to the misery of his time, and 
charm and grace are the main assets of his verse. In one bal- 
lade, rather freely translated by Longfellow, 1 the longing for 
France is at least genuine; it begins: 

En regardant vers le pays de France, 
Ung jour m'avint, a Dovre sur la mer. . . 

By a singular fate, the poems of Charles d'Orleans remained 
virtually unprinted until the seventeenth century. 

1 See Longfellow's Poetry of Europe. 



CHAPTER II 

THE UNIVERSITY AND THE HUMANISM OF 
THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY 

Amid the political and social turmoil of the fourteenth and 
fifteenth centuries the University of Paris represents one of the 
few elements of stability. In upholding the medieval point of 
view and thus assuming more and more a reactionary role, it 
nevertheless served the cause of learning (see especially Oresme's 
vulgarization of Aristotle) and it championed the rights of the 
people against the nobles. The outstanding figure of the Uni- 
versity group was the great chancellor, Jean Gerson. We know 
him already, along with Christine de Pisan, as an opponent of 
Jean de Meun in the " grant guerre " concerning the Roman de 
la Rose. But he was also a fighter for " justice against political 
interests, a reformer of the inner life of the church, a steadfast 
worker for church unity, and — above all — the greatest religious 
writer and preacher of his age in France." * In this last respect 
he is a parallel to Bossuet. 

But Gerson had his intellectual forbears, and with these we 
shall deal first. An important scholar and translator of the 
Early middle of the fourteenth century is Pierre Bercuire. 

Humanists He lived for a while at Avignon (1320-1340) and 
there met Petrarch in retirement at Vaucluse. Aptly the latter 
calls him " vir insignis pietate et litteris." In 1342 Bercuire 
was busy at Paris on a large encyclopedia in three parts: the 
Reductorium, Repertorium et Breviarium morale. He then be- 
came secretary to John the Good, and like Vincent de Beauvais 
(the translator of the Legenda aurea and other widely-read 
books), he set himself the task of translating Livy into French. 
The Rommans de Titus Livius (completed in 1356), as the title 
is, deals only with the better known portions of Livy's history. 
But it does so in vivid, forceful language, which won the work 

1 D. H. Carnahan, University of Illinois Studies, III, p. 11. 
98 






THE AGE OF CHARLES V 99 

readers beyond the borders of France, in Spain and in Italy. 
The translation, which is addressed to those " qui vouldront 
savoir Tart de chevalerie et prendre exemple aux vertus an- 
ciennes," is still strictly medieval ; at the same time, Roman hero- 
ism is exalted and a differentiation as to classical traits is already 
apparent. In a less degree than Oresme, but to a considerable 
extent certainly, Bercuire enriched French by the introduction 
of words of a learned character. 

The greatest impetus to learning, however, at this date was 
given by the circle surrounding Charles V (1364-1380), justly 
surnamed the Wise. Charles' own part in this movement was 
preeminently that of a Maecenas. The most noteworthy among 
those he encouraged was Nicolas Oresme. Of Norman birth, 
Oresme studied in Paris and was subsequently maitre and grand 
maitre in the University ; in 1361 he became dean of the Church 
of Rouen, and in 1377 he was appointed bishop of Lisieux. An 
intimate of Charles, he yet enjoyed the privilege of voicing his 
own convictions; and when the King became deeply interested 
in astrology — an art which the French borrowed from the 
Arabians — he had the boldness to write Des Divinations (1370) , 
an attack on the futility of such superstitions. Encouraged by 
the King, Oresme was the first to translate Aristotle into French 
— to be sure, from a Latin version derived from the Arabic. 
Slight as is the merit of this translation, since Oresme wrote 
Latin far better than French, the work was an innovation and 
thus paved the way for future students of the Stagirite. Oresme 
himself remarks prophetically : " Ou temps advenir pourra estre 
baillee par autres en frangoys plus clerement et plus complecte- 
ment " — a criticism which we admit and admire. The Latinism 
of his style, in which such words as industrie, cure, fortitude, con- 
stance, architectonique occur, is indicative of a new strain in the 
language and shows that humanism, 2 astir in Italy, is having 
some effect in France. 

One writer, but only one, is indeed frankly humanistic. This 
is Jean de Montreuil (1354-1418) , secretary to Charles VI and to 
the Dukes of Burgundy and Orleans. Although his writing was 
mainly Latin, he deserves mention here because of his defense 

* On humanism, see Part II, Bk. I, Ch. I 



100 THE UNIVERSITY AND HUMANISM 

of Jean de Meun against the attack of Christine de Pisan. He 
also undertook various embassies for Charles: to England, to 
Germany and to Italy. Later, in 1418, he fell a victim to the 
fury of Armagnacs because he refused to flee from Paris. What 
characterizes him, however, in both his life and his writings is 
his overt paganism. He inscribed the ten laws of Lycurgus on 
the portico of his house in bold defiance of the church. Thus he 
presents the dilemma of the Renaissance: divided between faith 
and reason. 

This brings us back to Gerson, who admitted the need of 
greater enlightenment, especially as regards justice, but found the 
Jean solvent for the conflicting currents of the age in the 

Gerson Universal Church. Jean Le Charlier was a native 

of Gerson in Champagne (1363) —hence the name. Of peasant 
stock, he had it in him to enter the College de Navarre and work 
his way to the doctorat en theologie (1392). He then taught 
theology and became court preacher to Charles VI. In 1395 he 
succeeded his former teacher, Pierre d'Ailly, in the chancellorship 
of the University of Paris. In this role he became conspicuous 
as a reformer and a thinker, and his eloquence appeared in 
the great number of brilliant sermons which bear his name. But 
the " great schism " in the Church (1378-1449) was a source of 
deep sorrow to this ardent unifier; further, the courageous 
part he played in having the University condemn the murder of 
the Duke of Orleans made his position as chancellor difficult. 
After the Council of Constance he went into voluntary exile in 
Austria, and his last years were spent in meditation at Lyons. 
He died in 1429, when the clouds hung heavily over France. 

Gerson united in his work the subtlety of scholasticism and 
the qualities of a brilliant but somewhat uneven orator. His 
masters were Saint Bernard, of whom he had the simplicity; 
Saint Bonaventura, whose conciliating and mystical theology 
was more to his liking than the more abstruse thinking of Thomas 
Aquinas; and Cicero, who was his model in style. His great traits 
are sincerity, simplicity of language, and a profound love of the 
people. Was not Christ a carpenter's son and he, Gerson, the 
son of a peasant? Thus he encouraged teaching in French and 
sought to make truth, as he saw it, accessible to all. 

Some sixty of his sermons are extant in their French forms. 



GERSON 101 

Many of these have the devices of the medieval genres. A ser- 
mon on the Immaculate Conception is a debat between Nature 
and Grace; another, on the Sins, is a bataille des vertus et des 
vices. Allegory of course is frequent: the apostles are armed 
with the sword of true wisdom and protected by the shield of 
faith, and so on. But his greatest discours, the Vivat Rex, 
delivered before the King, is laden with classical allusions. Yet 
he addresses the monarch in accents as bold and striking as 
Bossuet's: 

Le pauvre homme n'aura pain a manger, sinon par advanture 
aucun peu de seigle ou d'orge; sa pauvre femme gerra, et auront 
quatre ou six petits enfans au fouyer, ou au four, qui par ad- 
vanture sera chauld, demanderont du pain, crieront a la rage de 
faim. . . . Or, devroit bien suffire cette misere . . . 
viendront ces paillars qui chergeront tout . . . tout sera prins 
et happe; et querez qui paye. 

The same graphic power is seen in the famous sermon on the 
Passion, the Ad Deum vadit, delivered before the court in 1402. 
The picture Gerson gives of the streets of Jerusalem as Christ 
is led away from Pilate is so vivid that the reader has a con- 
vincing impression of being there himself. 

Or taking the Tractatus contra Romantium de Rosa, written 
(in 1402) in the form of a " vision," we note the same forceful 
traits in Gerson's Latin style: 

Quis succendit magnam Trojam crudeliter igni et flarnma? 
Stultus amator. Quis turn interire fecit plures quam centum 
mille Nobiles: Hectorem, Achillem, Priamum, et alios? Fatuus 
amor. Quis expulsit urbe Tarquinium Regem et ejus sobolem? 
Fatuus amor. 

Gerson, somewhat differently from Christine, saw in the 
Roman de la Rose a work subversive of private and public 
morality; in fact, in his Sermon contre la luxure (1399) he had 
condemned the poem to be burnt. Thus to him ethical standards 
outweigh other considerations, and he challenges those who, like 
Jean de Montreuil and Pierre Col — canon of Paris — see in 
Jean de Meun the apostle of freedom and social betterment. 

In short, the chancellor remains the representative of his 
time: a traditionalist with a sense of political justice and an en- 



102 THE UNIVERSITY AND HUMANISM 

thusiasm for formal learning but withal a subservient son of the 
church. On the whole, he retarded the enlightenment of the 
spirit more than he aided it. At the same time, his champion- 
ship of the masses and his cult of Cicero were not without sig- 
nificance. The fifteenth century was to see the appearance of 
the printing press. Not the least influence of this abortive 
humanism was to increase the reading public, by making new 
material accessible and encouraging the use of French for erudite 
purposes. Its great defect is that it also inaugurated la verbo- 
cination latiale (the abuse of Latinism) , from which both prose 
and poetry were to suffer. 

It must not be thought, however, that in the fourteenth and 
fifteenth centuries the University of Paris enjoyed the literary 
Education distinction it had had during the Old French period 
in general proper. To be sure, the Sorbonne, founded in 1250 
for poor students in theology, continued to number important 
persons among its graduates, and the College de Navarre, its 
rival in importance, fulfilled as in the case of Orseme the role of 
providing scholars for the court. Both of these colleges were 
to maintain their hold until well into the Renaissance; while 
the Sorbonne, though no longer a church institution, is, of course, 
even today, an important part of the University. Nevertheless, 
as we saw above, in 1236 Henry dAndeli bewailed the passing 
of the arts students in Paris and the increasing attention given 
to logic and dialectics. As regards education, the current of the 
thirteenth century was in the direction of science. Contact with 
the Orient, and especially with the Mohammedan world, had 
spread the knowledge of Aristotle's treatises on natural phil- 
osophy, and thus the " New Aristotle " became the controlling 
factor in educational affairs. Again it was to be part of the 
work of the Renaissance to dethrone this narrow interpretation 
of Aristotle in favor of Plato and the Aristotle of the Poetics. 
Thus, one emphasis succeeds another. 

On the whole, then, the study of the classics declined in this 
period, while that of medicine and the law rose. This was not 
true of all French universities; the southern ones, among them 
Toulouse, continued to have a lingering regard for classical 
learning. But the decline was sufficient to enable Petrarch, in a 
letter (1367) to Pope Urban V, to deride the French " as bar- 



EDUCATION 103 

barians among whom there could be no orators or poets." The 
original Seven Arts had consisted of the trivium, that is gram- 
mar, rhetoric and dialectic; and the quadrivium, or arithmetic, 
geometry, astronomy and music. This was the program of the 
lesser medieval schools, upon which the university was built; 
either by elaborating these subjects, as for instance dialectic, or 
by adding others, such as law or theology. After the stimulating 
twelfth century, the general development was as follows: for the 
time being the quadrivium flourished in accordance with the new 
interest in natural philosophy — we must not forget that Roger 
Bacon was a student at Paris before 1240; then this influence 
lapsed, and the subjects of the trivium, originally connected with 
the classics or literature proper, were cultivated in relation to 
numerous translations from the Latin. The result was that 
grammar, rhetoric and dialectic became ends of learning in 
themselves, quite apart from the subjects to which they were 
related. 

It was in spite of the trend of education, therefore, rather than 
because of it, and then only in sporadic cases, that the university 
formed the background for literary and artistic inspiration in 
the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. When we come to con- 
sider Rabelais, we shall see how his soul rose against the kind 
of education we have been describing. As late even as Des- 
cartes, medieval pedantry seems to have retained its hold on 
education. 



CHAPTER III 

THE CYCLIC DRAMA AND THE FARCE 
OF MAITRE PATHELIN 

In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the drama had been 
largely a product of the literary guilds or puys (see Bk. I, Ch. 
III). During the fifteenth century it passed into the hands of 
special societies known as conjreries, and it then attained its 
apogee in the medieval form. As a popular genre the drama 
now takes the place of the epic, which continues to be written, 
but in prose redactions, based on the earlier chansons and in- 
tended more and more for the " reading " public. 

The conjreries were not what we should today call profes- 
sional troupes, but companies of artisans and trades-people de- 
voting their Sundays and holidays to acting. Weekday per- 
formances were unknown until 1597. Serious plays were of 
course preferred. Thus in 1443 shoemakers played the Mystere 
de Saint Crispin et Saint Crispian, and in 1512 masons and 
carpenters performed the Mystere de Saint Louis. The best 
known of such societies was the famous Confrerie de la 
Passion, mentioned as early as 1380, to which Charles VI, in 
1402, gave an exclusive privilege for Paris and its environs. 
Here it flourished until 1548, when Parliament, unwilling to 
tolerate the further profanation of Holy Writ, suppressed the 
mysteres sacres. But this date also marks the purchase — by the 
Confrerie — of the Hotel de Bourgogne, the most important 
Parisian theater during the hundred years that followed, and 
thus the beginning of the modern secular stage. 

As applied to a dramatic performance, the word mystere was 
first used at Rouen in 1374. Henceforth it supplants the older 
The terms jeu and miracle. Its derivation goes back to 

Mysteres Greek through the Latin form misterium (indicating 
a religious origin) , although Lat. ministerium x (" perform- 

1 Compare the Spanish auto 
104 



THE MYSTERY PLAY 105 

ance ") was contaminated with it. Except for the moralite, 
which is a dramatized allegory, the name mystere came to em- 
brace all forms of serious drama, sacred as well as secular. 

About sixty mysteres are extant today. Of these only some 
twenty treat Biblical subjects; the remainder deal with the lives 
of saints or occasionally an important secular event, such as the 
siege of Orleans or the fall of Troy. Beyond the central event 
which they celebrate, the mysteres have no particular unity; in- 
deed, generally their parts hang together loosely like rings upon 
a string; for example, the Passion of 1431 is composed of several 
distinct plays. The majority are of inordinate length, a mystere 
by the brothers Greban having some sixty-two thousand lines. 
Like the epics, they fall into families or cycles, according as 
they treat the Old Testament, the New Testament, the Acts of 
the Apostles, and the like. Most of the mysteres are in eight- 
syllable verse, although other measures are also found and short- 
stanza forms, like the triolet, occur in the lyric passages of the 
text. It is only natural that, with the tendency to be encyclo- 
pedic, the author of a mystere should vary the tone of his com- 
position to suit the situation he is treating; not only do realistic 
details abound but the serious dialogue, consisting of scholastic 
and moralizing quips, is frequently interrupted with interludes 
of fun and satire (see the farce). Thus, in the main, it is the 
drama that epitomizes the real life of the time. 

In order to visualize such a dramatic performance in the fif- 
teenth century the reader should bear in mind the background of 
town and city life. A town has just escaped the scourge of the 
Black Death and its citizens in a burst of gratitude celebrate 
the event by giving a play. This was the case in 1508 at Ro- 
mans (Dauphine) , where it required the efforts of all the citizens 
and an outlay equivalent to about fifteen thousand francs to have 
a mystere performed, and even then the preparations took some 
ten months. Or the visit of some prince or potentate is expected 
and the town welcomes him with a dramatic performance. In 
either case, the representation would be entrusted to the con- 
frerie or directly to an acteur (author) , who would get the play 
ready or, if need be, write it. It took Andrieu de la Vigne five 
weeks to write the twenty thousand lines of his Vie de Saint 
Martin. The intention of giving a play would be announced to 



106 THE CYCLIC DRAMA 

the town by a popular appeal, called cry; and when the play was 
ready the festivities would begin with a grand parade or monstre 
through the city streets. As the performance usually lasted sev- 
eral days, the plays were divided into journees (in place of acts) , 
each journee having a prologue and an epilogue, and the entire 
representation concluding with a Te Deum, in which the public 
joined. In this last respect, at least, the liturgical character 
was preserved. 

In preparing such a show considerable attention was given 
to the scenery. Since the representation took place in the open 
air, in the square next to the church (see Bk. I, Ch. Ill), or, as 
at Autun and Bourges, in an amphitheater seating many people, 
it was possible to depict practically the whole of creation. The 
manuscripts show that the stage was surrounded by various 
booths or mansions representing the chief places of the action. 
Thus a miniature of the Passion, as given in Valenciennes in 1547, 
portrays an elaborate set of structures, which represented Para- 
dise, Nazareth, the Temple, Jerusalem, the Palace of Pilate, the 
House of Bishops, the Golden Gate (with the sea in front of it) , 
the Limbo of the Fathers, and Hell. A sign or escritel might 
be attached to each booth stating what it represented. Es- 
pecially graphic, of course, was the mansion of Hell, since this 
appealed strongly to the popular imagination. 

As to the actors, these were recruited from various classes, 
particularly the guilds. The female parts were generally taken 
by men, whereas the roles that amused the public most were the 
" devils," the " beggars " and the sot or fool. An important 
mystere might have as many as five hundred participants. 

It follows that the mystere is a much confused genre. Out- 
wardly it was a kind of pageant, with as strong an appeal to the 
eye as to the mind. Unity of action, in our modern or the clas- 
sical sense, is of course lacking. A similar freedom exists with 
respect to the unities of time and place. Since the genre was 
popular in its aim, it is inevitable that few mysteres can be said 
to rank high as literature. In England the transcending genius 
of Shakespeare built his theater on medieval foundations. But 
in France, although the tragi-comedy of the sixteenth century is 
really an offspring of the miracle and the mystere, the Clas- 
sical drama of the seventeenth century transforms tragi-comedy 



THE MYSTERY OF THE PASSION 107 

by conformity to Aristotelian rule and precept. With all this 
we shall deal presently. Meanwhile, several mysteres deserve 
notice here. 

Most noteworthy of them all is the Mystere de la Passion by 
Arnoul Greban, written before 1452. Greban was a native of Le 
Mans, studied in Paris and later held a post at the 
Passion" University, while also acting as master of the choir 
by Greban boys of Notre-Dame. His brother, Simon, was like- 
wise a playwright. Indeed, Marot eulogizes the pair for their 
" bien resonnant stile," and as late as 1547 Du Bellay speaks of 
them as " divins esprits." In later life they collaborated on the 
Actes des Apotres, performed at Bourges in 1536. What dis- 
tinguishes the Passion is the framework in which the drama is 
set. The action itself contains nothing to stir the modern reader; 
Christ, the central figure of the plot, goes willingly to his fate, 
and although the forces that oppose him are vividly portrayed, 
there is no dramatic conflict in the accepted sense of the word. 
On the other hand, the setting is skillfully and poetically worked 
out. This consists of a familiar medieval motif: the dispute of 
four virtues, Justice, Truth, Peace and Mercy, before the 
throne of God, as to the fate of Man. Mercy makes a strong 
plea for human salvation; but as Wisdom points out, this can 
be effected only through the sacrifice of God Himself. At the 
close of the drama the virtues reassemble, this time in blissful 
concord; Truth embraces Mercy, and Peace makes friends 
with Justice. As Gaston Paris observes, Arnoul has at times 
" des vers bien frappes, des elans poetiques, un maniement 
heureux du rythme " ; but more often he is stilted, merely 
rhetorical and affected. His best passages are undoubtedly 
those in which he forgets his lofty theme and speaks the simple 
every-day speech of the common folk — and such passages on 
the whole are rare. In its totality the work may be compared 
to a Flemish painting on the same subject; it is rich in color, 
grotesque and often somber in detail, heart-rending in some of 
its naive pathos, but diffuse in concept and execution. 

Greban 's play was exceedingly popular — indeed, it was imi- 
tated four times. Of these reworkings, that by Jean Michel 
(about 1486) — physician to the city of Angers — is the most 
celebrated. Michel's text passed through fifteen editions and 



108 THE CYCLIC DRAMA 

was officially adopted by the Confrerie de la Passion, thus sup- 
planting its own more illustrious prototype. 

Two well-known mysteres based on the lives of saints are 
the Vie de Saint Martin and the Mystere de Saint Louis. 
The author of the former, Andrieu de la Vigne 
Biblical (1457-1527), was the court poet Charles VIII, in 

Mysteres whose honor he wrote the Vergier d'honneur. He is 
also known by his ballades, rondeaux and complaintes. He 
was a member of the Basoche (see below) and composed his play 
in 1496 for the citizens of Seurre, who wished thus to honor their 
patron saint. In Andrieu piety and cynicism mingle; as a 
curtain raiser to the mystere he produced his farce of he 
Meunier, which is one of the most licentious works of the 
age. The Mystere de Saint Louis is a tour de force by the 
famous Gringoire or Gringore, whose perplexing figure Hugo 
has revived romantically in Notre-Dame de Paris. We shall 
hear more of him presently. It is enough to note now that in this 
play Gringoire did not do himself justice; not only is his account 
of Louis IX drawn from inferior sources but the play itself is 
dull and platitudinous, at least to modern ears. 

Far superior to the preceding are two extant secular mysteres: 
the Siege d'Orleans and the Destruction de Troie la grant. The 
first, begun before 1439, is of unknown authorship and celebrates 
in dignified, patriotic accents the tragedy of Joan of Arc; in 
addition, it is interesting because of its reference to John Falstaff, 
" the worthy knight," a character whom Shakespeare was at 
once to ridicule and to embellish. The second, by Jacques 
Millet, a law-student of Orleans, composed about 1450, was 
intended chiefly for reading. Millet's main source was Guido 
delle Colonne (see above), whose Troy legend he treats in true 
medieval fashion, exalting the bravery of the Trojans and under- 
scoring the perfidy of the Greeks. The use of musical interludes 
in this play is probably an innovation. Curious, too, is the 
name of transgredie (tragedy) which Millet gives to his work. 

Dealing directly with every-day life, comedy in France was 
less subject than tragedy to classical influences and therefore 
Types of presents a more continuous history from the Middle 
Comedy Ages down to the present. This is especially true 

of its dominant form, the farce. Moreover, like tragedy, comedy 



MEDIEVAL COMEDY 109 

owes little as regards origin to the drama oi antiquity. 
Medieval society possessed the means to develop the comic in 
all its satire and irony; for this the playwright found ample 
provision in the licence of the lower classes and their hatred of 
the powerful and great. Besides, the " comic spirit " — that 
readiness to contrast the exaggerated and unnatural with hard 
common sense — is one of the inborn and abiding traits of the 
Gallic race. 

It is customary to divide medieval comedy into farces, sotties 
and moralites, although the last class is more often serious than 
truly comic. As its name implies, the farce (meaning " stuffing ") 
is a comic interlude placed between the parts of a mystere in 
order to vary the intellectual diet of the audience at the oppor- 
tune moment. In spirit it is akin to the fabliau, the aim being 
to amuse at the expense of the characters shown. Ethics is 
thus the weakest side of the farce, which is " moral " only in the 
French sense that it may be psychologically true to life. The 
sottie, which takes its name from the fact that the performers 
were sots or fools, serves the more definite purpose of political 
satire. And the moralite, a dramatized allegory like the well- 
known English Everyman, could be either constructively moraliz- 
ing or merely cynical; its purpose, like that of the sottie, was 
often political. 

The two Parisian societies that played comedy were the 
Basoche and the Enfants sans Souci. In other cities there were 
similar groups, such as Cornards at Rouen, who continue 
until the time of Corneille. The members of the Basoche (from 
the Latin b asilica) were clerks of the Parisian law court or Par- 
liament. They were well organized, possessed such special priv- 
ileges as that of coining a kind of money (tokens) , and on Shrove 
Tuesday held a feigned lawsuit, called cause-grasse. Their 
repertory was limited to moralites and farces, although the Cry 
de la Basoche (1548) is the only extant play that can be attrib- 
uted to them with certainty. The sottie was the specialty 
of the Enfants or Gallants sans Souci, who as fools or sots 
paraded about in parti-colored costume with cap and bells. At 
the head of this company stood the Prince des Sots, and about 
equal in importance was La Mere Sotte, a post worthily filled 
by Gringoire — in the words of a contemporary: 



110 THE CYCLIC DRAMA 

Robert Porcin devers Auxerre 

Bien scet coucher sa rithme en serre; 

Mere Sotte appele Gringoire 

Est dit docteur en cest affaire. 2 

This type of organization was popular also in the provinces; in 
Dijon it bore the motto: Stultorum numerus est infinities (" The 
number of fools is unlimited ") , of which the implication is clear. 
An excellent idea of the scope of medieval comedy is ob- 
tained from Gringoire's Jeu du prince des sots, produced at 
"the Halles in Paris in 1512. Pierre Gringoire or 
Gringoire Gringore (about 1475.1539) was f Norman descent, 

and in spite of various attempts to regard him as the Villon of 
the French stage, he seems to have been a thoroughly respect- 
able member of the bourgeoisie. Of his youth we know nothing, 
but about 1500 he appears as the poet of the Chateau de Labour, 
written in the allegorical style of his day ; and he helps organize 
a performance in honor of an archduke of Austria. The brilliant 
period of his life is from 1505-1512; it is then that he shines as 
a pamphleteer, official mouthpiece of Louis XII, popular jester 
and entertainer — in a word, as La Mere Sotte. We have 
already mentioned the Mystere de Saint Louis; his minor works 
are Les jolles Entreprises and Les Abus du monde. Gringoire's 
forte is satire; he can be simple and incisive, sparing neither 
morals nor personalities. He knew what the public wanted and 
supplied it. Thus, Louis XII, aware of the poet's power, took 
pains to befriend him; and Gringoire was not slow to appre- 
ciate the royal favor, as appears from his praise of Louis in 
the words: 

Mais il est si humain tous jours 

Quand on a devers luy recours, 

Jamais il n'use de vengeance. 

But Francis I preferred Italian players to this popular favorite, 
so that in 1518 Gringoire moved to Nancy and became tourna- 
ment-herald to Antoine de Lorraine. Here he found shelter for 
his later years and without ceasing to write saw the dawn of a 
new epoch break over France. 

2 Robert Porcin from Auxerre 

Is skillful in compressing his verse; 

Mere Sotte called Gringoire 

Is acknowledged master in such matters. 



GRINGOIRE 111 

To revert to the Jeu of 1512, this play not only shows Grin- 
goire at his best but also is typical of medieval comedy as a 
whole. It consists of four parts: a cry to summon the people, 
a sottie to provoke them against the Pope, a moralite to win 
them to the policy of Louis — whom Julius II had shamefully be- 
trayed — and a farce to satisfy their thirst for ribaldry and fun. 

The sottie constitutes a sort of revue or " follies " of the burn- 
ing question of the day. Sotte Commune (the People) cares 
little about the merits of the quarrel ; her cue is 

Faulte d'argent, c'est douleur non pareille. 

Prince and Church are equally acceptable to her provided she 
does not suffer; but she exaggerates rumor and easily believes 
the worst; thus Mere Sotte (the Church) by her very appearance 
evokes Sotte Commune's enmity, whereas the Sots that surround 
the Prince are at least joyful and generous, like Louis himself: 

Tou jours gay et joyeulx 
En despit de voz ennemys. 

Gringoire's moralite is the logical sequel of his sottie. The tone 
of this part is graver, and Sotte Commune is now the French 
People. Previously the Church had been blamed for leaving 
her pacific role and becoming warlike. Here the poet opposes 
the Italianate Frenchman to the French patriot, who thinks first 
of his own country. The conclusion is that both the Church 
and the People are reproved for their respective faults. 

Totally different from the preceding is the farce, Faire et Dire. 
Gringoire is as licentious, as gaulois, as any of the writers of 
this genre. Raoullet, the hero, has deferred marriage too long, 
and Doublette, his wife, has a reason — if not a justification — 
for the contemptible part she plays. 

In general, Gringoire's Jeu is to the point, its characters are 
life-like and real, and the psychology is keen — anticipating 
not a little that of seventeenth -century comedy. 

As a type, the moralite throve especially during the second 
Other na ^ °f ^ ne fifteenth century. Some sixty moralites 

Comedies are extant. These vary in manner and theme, the 
oldest and best being Bien-avise, Mal-avise, written at Rennes 
in 1439. This play enforces a general lesson: Bien-avise arrives 



112 THE CYCLIC DRAMA 

through Reason and Faith to Good End, whereas Mal-avise is 
led by Licence and other evil traits to Bad End. 

On the other hand, but few sotties have been preserved and 
these few belong mostly to the sixteenth century. Perhaps the 
most popular was Monde et Abuz, composed about 1513. Here 
we are shown an old and weary World, whom Abuse has put to 
sleep. The latter then releases Sot-corrompu (a lawyer), Sot- 
trompeur (a merchant), Sot-ignorant (a peasant), and Sotte-folle 
(a woman) ; together they try to make a new world after fleecing 
the old one. The result of course is anarchy. In the end, the old 
world wakes up and warns the public against Utopian ideals. 

None of the types of drama we have mentioned produced a 
masterpiece. This distinction was reserved for the medieval 
farce. The great body of farces (some one hundred and fifty 
are extant) appeared between 1440 and 1560. According to 
Gaston Paris, the play called Du gargon et de Vaveugle, given 
in Tournai about 1277, is in reality a farce, though this word 
does not occur until later. Farcical in nature, but termed a 
bergerie, is Mieulx que devant, produced during the reign of 
Charles VII. The characters are: Flat-Country, Long-suffering 
People, a shepherdess and Better-than-before. The action con- 
sists of diatribes against the miseries and devastation of France, 
and the play concludes with Better-than-before offering pro- 
tection under Roger Bontemps, a topical character. The folk- 
lore theme of a husband, wife and mother-in-law, furnishes the 
plot of Le Cuvier. Here, as also in the Farce de la Cornette by 
Jean d'Abondance, the husband is the prosoective victim; but 
in the end the wife falls into the tub — the cuvier — and he 
refuses to rescue her unless she releases him from servility, a 
request which in the circumstances she is only too willing to 
grant. This brings us to the one masterpiece mentioned above, 
the Farce de Maitre Pathelin. 

Michelet has said that Pathelin is the " epic of an age of 
rogues." And roguery is indeed its key-note; but the handling 
of the theme, its marvelous characterization and its 
economy of detail place it in a class by itself. 

The plot runs as follows: Pathelin, a village lawyer, with the 
aid of his scheming wife, Guillemette, cheats a Draper out of a 
piece of cloth. To the Draper's insistent calls, Pathelin pretends 



THE FARCE OF PATHELIN 113 

to lend a deaf ear by feigning illness. The Draper, who refuses to 
pay his shepherd, Thibaut Aignelet, is in turn cheated by him 
out of one of his sheep. The matter is brought to court, and 
Pathelin defends the shepherd, who wins his case by assuming 
stupidity and replying " ba-a " to all the court's questions. But 
when Pathelin asks for his pay the wily shepherd continues to 
say " ba-a " ; thus one rogue outwits the other. 

The authorship of Pathelin is still unknown, though the play 
has been recently assigned to Guillaume Alexis, author of Le 
Blason de faulses amours. It must have been written about 
1469; probably in the Seine-et-Marne district, not far from 
Paris. The play scored a great success; it was frequently re- 
printed, it had two sequels, and was often quoted. Fournier has 
revived the play for the modern French stage. 

The characters of course are types, not one of which, says 
Professor Holbrook, has " any sense of right. Their morality 
. is to succeed; their greatest weakness, their only ab- 
surdity, is to be outdone. Philippe de Commines sums up their 
ethics in the maxim: 'Ceulx qui gaignent en ont toujours 
l'honneur!'" Yet each is also an individual: the lawyer who 
craves to be arrayed like his fellow barristers " in silks and 
satins" (de camelos et de camocas) , the judge who sups with 
a criminal fresh from the stocks, the wife who knows and fears 
her husband's foibles, and the numskull of a shepherd " with 
his bump of villainy." The irony of the situation lies in its 
eternal verity. It is the function of this farce to set in a clear 
light the lead which French comedy was to take, as revealed by 
the unsparing representation — and caricature — of life in its 
familiar, domestic situations. From this point of view Moliere 
was not to depart, and the best French comedy remains a gen- 
uine descendant of its medieval prototype, in theme and often 
in plot. 



CHAPTER IV 

THREE INDIVIDUALS: ANTOINE DE LA SALE, 
VILLON, COMMINES 

A story-teller, a poet, an historian; the common feature of 
these writers is their individualism. Belonging to the fifteenth 
century, all three draw their material from the traditional chan- 
nels, yet each gives to his work the imprint of a thoroughly 
personal reaction: La Sale in his ability to characterize several 
points of view, Villon in the directness of his emotion, and Corn- 
mines in his unfettered sense of political fact. With them the 
medieval period formally closes. 

The life of Antoine de La Sale was unusually rich in experience. 
Born in Provence in 1388 as the son of a famous condottiere, at 
Antoine de the a & e °^ fourteen ne became page to Louis II of 
La Sale Anjou. This prince took him to Italy and Sicily, 

where he visited Messina and attempted to ascend Stromboli 
(1407). He then made several short stays at the Burgundian 
court and wrote a summary of Louis II's Italian expedition. In 
1415 he volunteered in the bombastic crusade of the Portuguese 
against Morocco and was present at the capture of Ceuta. On 
the death of Louis he accompanied the latter's successor again 
to Italy. In 1425 he reappears in the official records as viguier 
(provost) of Aries. Seven years later Rene of Anjou praises 
La Sale for the service he had rendered his son as a tutor. About 
this time La Sale seems to have married. In 1438 we find him 
again in Italy, where Rene made him commander of Castel 
Capuano (Naples), while he himself took the field. But the 
Angevin cause did not prosper, and in 1440 La Sale is back in 
Provence. He now devotes himself to literature, La Salade, 
his first extant work, being of this period. 

In 1448 La Sale left the service of the Angevins, to whom he 
had been attached for nearly half a century, and entered that of 
Louis of Luxemburg, Comte de Saint-Pol, who appointed him to 

114 



LA SALE 115 

educate his three sons. In this function he spent the next ten 
years at Chatelet-sur-Oise and there wrote his remaining liter- 
ary works: La Sale in 1451; Petit Jean de Saintre in 1456; 
he Reconjort, completed during a casual visit to Vendeuil-sur- 
Oise in the same year ; and Des anciens tournois, finished in 1459. 
It is probable that the last years of his life were spent with Philip 
the Good, Duke of Burgundy, in Flanders. At least, the Cent 
Nouvelles nouvelles (1462) speak of him as " premier maistre 
d'hostel de monseigneur le due," and one of his own manuscripts 
is dated from Brussels in 1461. This is also the probable date 
of his death. 

There was room in this variegated life for the most discordant 
elements. Sober fact, history, legend, superstition — all have 
La Sale's ^ ne * r pl ace m ^ an ^ are reflected in La Sale's works. 
Works He was well-read; he had seen the art of Italy and 

of Flanders; and he knew human nature on a broad scale. His 
first work, La Salade, a medley, is a symbol of the man's nature. 
It begins with a sober disquisition on governments and rulers; 
then comes a list of the authors La Sale would have had his 
pupil read: Livy, Orosius, Suetonius and Lucan; and these 
are followed by examples or models for the future politician 
and warrior. Suddenly, then, didacticism gives place to a real- 
istic account of the author's visit to the mountain grotto of 
Queen Sybilla together with a description of the Lipari Islands 
and the ascent of Stromboli. Lastly, there is a chronicle of the 
Houses of Sicily and Aragon and a chapter on heraldry. Thus, 
in spite of its longueurs, the work predicts La Sale's most strik- 
ing qualities: his ability to wed the serious with the fantastic, 
his sense of detail, his grasp of the art of the nouvelle — com- 
pressed, simple and psychological. 

This modern love of a dramatic situation is especially evident 
in the Reconjort de Madame de Fresne, offered to this lady on the 
death of her only son. The theme is illustrated by two exempla. 
The first, in which La Sale ignores historical fact, tells of the 
Sire du Chastel, governor of Brest, which the English Black 
Prince is supposed to be besieging. Chastel, hoping for relief, 
has signed a truce with the Prince and has given his only son as 
a hostage. The relief arrives but the Prince, false to his word, 
threatens to put the youth to the sword unless the town is 



116 ANTOINE DE LA SALE, VILLON, COMMINES 

surrendered. In his despair Chastel turns to his wife, who refuses 
to take the responsibility of a decision but points out to her 
husband what his decision must be: 

"Nous sommes assez jeunes pour avoir encore des enfants; 
mais si vous perdez votre honneur, vous ne le recouvrerez plus." 

The second exemplum is taken from an event in the crusade 
against Morocco in which La Sale was a participant. Here, also, 
a mother seeks consolation in the heroic thought that her child 
died in a patriotic cause. In both instances, but particularly 
in the first, La Sale shows a power of communicating emotion 
and an understanding of character that are rare at this time. 

His greatest work, however, is the combined novel and short- 
story, Petit Jean de Saintre. At the court of the French King 
The "Petit there lives the beautiful young widow Madame des 
Saintre" Belles Cousines. Having vowed not to remarry, 
she devotes herself to the education of one of the King's pages, 
Jean, eldest son of the Lord of Saintre. Jokingly at first she 
introduces him to the subject of " courtly love " and the deeds 
of the great lovers of the past: Lancelot, Gawain and Tristan. 
Thus she plays with fire, and as the youth grows up her relation- 
ship to him assumes the outward aspect of a liaison. But 
Jean, she thinks, must win fame, and so she sends him forth 
against the Saracens of " Pruyse." This enforced absence, 
however, has one result; namely, that on Jean's return she 
tries henceforth to hold him for herself. During fifteen months 
she wages a losing battle. When the break comes, as it of 
course must, the Dame des Belles Cousines is in the anguish 
of despair. Here begins the second part of the story. This 
consists of a nouvelle in which the formerly virtuous lady falls 
a victim to her confessor, a pleasure-loving abbe. Gay and 
amiable, but tricky, the latter is a type worthy of the eighteenth 
century. Jean is soon forgotten by the lady in her new lover's 
embraces. Then the unforeseen happens. Jean, who had left 
the court on a military expedition, suddenly returns home and 
broods vengeance on the faithless pair. At first he is no match 
for the abbe's superior cunning and strength. But finally, dur- 
ing a dinner at which the lady is present, Jean proposes that 
he and his rival joust in armor. In vain does the lady try to 



LA SALE 117 

dissuade him from this plan; Jean insists, and the result is 
that the abbe is defeated and his helpless mistress is held up 
to the scorn of the court. 

The second part of this narrative — the nouvelle — is su- 
perior in workmanship to the first part. M. Soderhjelm speaks 
of it as: 

un morceau d'art du premier ordre, empreint des meilleures 
qualites que la prose frangaise ait jamais possedees: clarte viva- 
cite, verite, grace, et d'un esprit superieurement railleur. 

The first part — the roman — for all its poetry, suffers in com- 
parison. But how reconcile these seemingly disparate parts, 
with their respective qualities of idealism and cynical reality? 
Some critics have thought that La Sale purposely wished to 
satirize under the same cover the first part of his story. But 
a second reading will show that the contradiction lies not in 
the story but in life itself, of which La Sale gives a genuine 
picture. From the start the Dame des Belles Cousines has the 
two sides to her character, and the art of La Sale consists 
precisely in making them appear successively, in accordance 
with the thwarting of her first love and the triumph of the 
second, for even her idealism is not lacking in a sensual back- 
ground. Thus depth of observation is the quality of this work, 
" the first," says Saintsbury, " in point of date of the long series 
of realistic novels for which French literature is so famous." 

Little literary value can be attached to the author's La Sale 
and his Des anciens tournois et faictz d'armes. They are both 
didactic and lack originality. A poem of his, La Journee d'on- 
neur et de prouesse (1459), is a frigid and wearisome allegory. 

On the other hand, a word is in place on the Quinze joyes 
de manage (date uncertain) and the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles 
The (1462), since several prominent scholars attribute 

'ioves n de them *° ^ a ^ a * e an( * tney are amon § the rea Uy 

mariage" notable works of the period. 

The first of these belongs to the rich misogynic literature of 
the Middle Ages, of which we had an example in the second 
part of the Roman de la Rose. It is written in a terse, force- 
ful style, and excels by its well-drawn and realistic pictures 

of marital infelicity. The victim of the marriage relation is, 



118 ANTOINE DE LA SALE, VILLON, COMMINES 

of course, the " husband," described as " debonnaire comme le 
boeuff a la charue " — a type so abject in his humility that 
the author is forced to exclaim: " je croy que c'est cy une des 
grans douleurs qui soit sur terre." Each chapter of the work 
— and there is one for each " joy " — ends on a variation of the 
victim's misery. The objection to assigning the Quinze joyes 
to the authorship of La Sale is partly their early date (about 
1400) and partly the fact that his imitation of the Quinze joyes 
in his own La Sale is dull and awkard, indicating that the force- 
ful style of the original was after all beyond his power. 

As for the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles }> they are a revival of 
Th " c t ^ e 1 a bli au m the Italian garb of the novella. 
Nouvelles The influence here of the Decameron is obvious, 
nouvelles" although the themes are taken from Poggio's 
Facetiae. Again, unlike Boccaccio, the author remains aloof 
from his material ; he relates for the mere sake of the story and 
he has no sympathetic interest in his characters. Thus he is 
extravagantly indecent, and the point of his tales lies wholly 
in their wit. But he is dramatic and manages the technique 
of narrative ably. A distinct merit of his work is its use of 
every-day French — " la langue alors parlee." But most of 
these traits make it unlikely that the collection is by Antoine 
de La Sale. 

Frangois de Moncorbier (or des Loges), surnamed Villon, 
is so romantic a character that at times he has seemed legend- 
Francois ar y- -^ or one thing, his weatherbeaten figure has 
Villon wielded a strong fascination over poets and novel- 

ists, many of whom — from Victor Hugo to Stevenson — have 
overdrawn his traits. As a matter of fact, life dealt more 
sternly with him than with most of his race. He was born 
(1431) at the moment when the English Duke of Bedford 
reigned in the Louvre and the theological faculty of Paris had 
just decreed that Joan of Arc deserved to be burned: 

Jehanne la bonne Lorraine 
Qu'Englois brulerent a Rouan, 

as Villon sang later. Although the Montcorbier family was 
poor, the poet had relatives among the well-to-do; from one of 
these, Guillaume de Villon, chaplain of a collegiate church near 
the Sorbonne, Villon derived help and took his name. 



VILLON 119 

He was both a Bachelor (1449) and a Master (1452) of the 
University. But apparently he led in larks and brawls of the 
Latin Quarter rather than in the classroom. Pathetically he 
himself said: 

He! Dieu, se j'eusse estudie 
Ou temps de ma jeunesse folle 
Et a bonnes meurs dedie, 
J'eusse maison et couche molle. 
Mais quoi! je fuioie Tescolle, 
Comme fait le mauvais enfant — 

lines which show both the sincerity and the weakness of his 
nature. 

A burlesque roman, written by Villon but lost, clearly refers 
to the events of 1451-1453, when the University had to suspend 
its courses because of the licence of its students. But the poet 
knew also the Paris of the rive droite and its haunts, especially 
the Cemetery of the Innocents and its far-famed fresco of the 
Dance of Death or danse Macabre. Occasionally he mentions 
the great and powerful. But generally his companions were 
of a different sort: irresponsible creatures like Gui Tabarie, 
Colin des Cayeux (Villon's particular bad angel), and the 
edifying galaxy of fair ladies, from " la petite Macee d'Or- 
leans " to " la grosse Margot," not to mention his " chere 
Rose," who preferred to the poet: 

Quoi? une grant bourse de soie 
Pleine d'escus, parfonde et large. 

Of his actual life we have only meagre facts. In 1455 he 
was involved in a scrape that led to the murder of a 
parish priest, one Philippe Sermoise. Later he figures among 
a band of ruffians who broke into the College de Navarre. 
Then after writing his Petit Testament, more accurately termed 
Les Lais, he appears in Angers and was present in 1457 at the 
" court " of Blois, held by Charles d'Orleans. Soon after he was 
arrested at Meun-sur-Loire. Pardoned by the general amnesty 
of Louis XI when he ascended the throne, Villon returned for 
a brief visit to Paris and shortly after composed his [Grand] 
Testament, which contains the best part of himself. In 1462 
he was again locked up, this time in the Chatelet, and, upon 



120 ANTOINE DE LA SALE, VILLON, COMMINES 

being released, he soon after returned to prison under sentence 
to be hanged. In the face of death he then wrote his admirable 
Ballade des Pendus. But Parliament relented and changed the 
decree to one of banishment from Paris during ten years. Sub- 
sequently Villon disappears completely from view ; we know only 
that the first dated edition of his works was published in 1489. 

Villon is preeminently the poet of the unfortunate. Like 
Heine, to whom critics have compared him, he knew the pathos 
of life and also its ironies; and in an eternal union he welded 
the tender note with the shrill. He says himself " Je ris 
en pleurs." Thus he stands out from amidst chivalric conven- 
tion and interminable allegorizing as the one profoundly lyric 
figure, sinning and sinned against, sorrowful and gay, blas- 
phemous and idealistic; above all, sincere. Of all French poets, 
he is probably the least rhetorical. 

The total of his verse is small. It consists mainly of the Lais 
(Mod. Fr. legs), or Petit Testament, and the [Grand] Testament. 
In both works, written in stanzas of eight-syllable verse, he 
has followed a medieval convention of making imaginary legacies 
to one's friends and foes. Such already were the conges of Jean 
Bodel. But into this framework Villon has breathed all that 
was most vital to him, and he relieves the monotony of the 
form by the dexterous introduction of wonderful ballades and 
rondeaux. Most lovers of poetry have read, if not in the ori- 
ginal, then in the English rendering by Rossetti, the Ballade 
des Dames du temps jadis. The theme is immemorial, but 
the refrain: 

Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan? 

has an allusive quality equalled only by the telling adjectives 
whereby Villon visualizes each of the heroines enumerated. 
So, too, the picturesque horror and the deep pathos of the 
following from the Ballade des Pendus will live as long as 
poetry is read: 

La pluye nous a buez et lavez 

Et le soleil dessechiez et noircis; 

Pies, corbeaulx, nous ont les yeux cavez, 

Et arrachie la barbe et les sourcis. 

Jamais mil temps nous ne sommes assis; 



VILLON 121 

Puis ca, puis la, comme le vent varie, 

A son plaisir sans cesser nous charie, 

Plus becquetez d'oiseaulx que dez a couldre. 

Ne soiez done de nostre confrairie; 

Mais priez Dieu que tous nous vueille absouldre! 

We are all blanched and soddened of the rain, 
And eke dried up and blackened of the sun: 
Ravens and corbies have our eyes out-ta'en 
And plucked our beard and hair out, one by one. 
Whether by night or day, rest have we none: 
Now here, now there, at the wind's lustihead, 
We swing and creak and rattle overhead, 
No thimble dinted like our bird-pecked face. 
Folk, mock us not that are forspent and dead: 
The rather pray, God grant us of His grace! 

John Payne 1 

The wonder is that Villon could be so expressive and so utterly 
simple in his means of expression. Or take his description of 
Christmas, so wintry and desolate: 

morte saison, 
Que les loups se vivent de vent 
Et qu'on se tient en sa maison, 
Pour le frimas, pres du tison. 

But all this is the simplicity of a great imagination, which 
sees a situation as it is and renders it in eternal verity. As 
a final example, the reader should turn to the Ballade pour 
prier Nostre Dame, where Villon immortalizes his own mother, 
" povrette et ancienne," praying to the Virgin in her humble 
unlettered faith. And if a contrast be needed, there is the 
sensually satiric Contreditz de Franc-Gontier, an answer to 
Philippe de Vitry's poem on the joys of rural life. For all his 
wanderings, Villon remained the poet of Paris, indeed of the 
quartier in which he had tasted life to the dregs. One ballade, 
beginning " Je meurs de soif aupres de la fontaine," is purely 
conventional, in the antithetical style so much favored by the 
Petrarchists of the Renaissance. 

1 From the Poems of Master Francis Villon, London, 1878 — a masterful 
translation of the poet's works. 



122 ANTOINE DE LA SALE, VILLON, COMMINES 

As an historian Philippe de Commines ranks with Ville- 
hardouin and Froissart, although his style lacks the precision 
of the one and the opulence of the other. Like 
de Com- Froissart, he was really a Fleming, the family 
mmes name being Van der Clyte. He was born about 

1445 near Aire, not far from Ypres. His father, of wealthy 
bourgeois extraction, had been bailli of Ghent and then of 
Flanders, but died leaving a dubious financial reputation to 
cloud his name. At twenty Philip went to the Burgundian 
Court and soon became attached to the Comte du Charolais 
— later Duke of Burgundy — whom he followed on various 
warlike expeditions. 

In 1471 he was in London, negotiating in behalf of the 
Burgundian Court, of which he was now a counselor and 
chamberlain. He also visited Brittany and Spain for the pur- 
pose of reviving the coalition against Louis XL In fact, how- 
ever, this secretissimorum secretarius deftly played into the 
French King's hands, for he had never liked Charles of Bur- 
gundy. Won either by the wiles of Louis or more probably by 
his gold, he went over completely to his side in August, 1472, 
apparently without the slightest thought of his former bene- 
factor. 

Louis XI, always astute, at once employed Commines on 
matters worthy of his talents. Besides a liberal pension, Louis 
enriched his favorite with spoils which Commines helped him to 
take from others. And, when in 1473 Commines married 
Helene de Chambes, the King enlarged this lady's dowry so that 
her husband became one of the richest men of France. In 1475 
Commines rose to be the head of the French diplomatic service ; 
he then won over the English to the French cause and went 
to Italy to form a league against the Pope. As long as Louis 
lived Commines continued to thrive; characteristically, it was 
he who as valet de chambre faithfully attended Louis in his 
last illness. 

But Fortune, against whom Commines warns his readers 
in the Memoires, forsook her favorite with the advent of 
Charles VIII. Accused of favoring the Orleans party (Louis 
XII), Commines. was compelled to make restitution of his ill- 
won property and to suffer imprisonment. In 1492, however, 



COMMINES 123 

he returned for a brief period to the royal favor, employing 
his great talent in successful negotiations in Italy. But the 
accession of Louis XII, in 1498, robbed him of all further 
political power. He now lived in retirement, except for various 
lawsuits which further reduced his revenue, and tried to for- 
get his sorrows by writing his Memoir es. He died on October 
18, 1511. 

This grandeur et decadence of the man is the background 
and much of the substance of his writing. The Memoires fall 
into two parts: the period of 1464-1483, and that of 1484- 
1498 (the Italian campaign). A born politician, Commines is 
exact, clear, forceful and, above all, clever. He is the first 
French apostle of " success," and has frequently been com- 
pared, as to point of view, with Machiavelli. Personally he 
was cold and calculating, and of course lacks the extraor- 
dinary culture of the great Italian. But he was far-seeing, 
especially in regard to England, and his insight into human 
motive and character is remarkable. 

He claims in his work to give instruction (enseignements) : 
" non point aux bestes et simples gens mais aux princes et gens 
de court." Practically he claims to inculcate foresight and dis- 
trust, on the part of the ruler, as regards his fellow men. 
Trust no one but yourself, especially not Fortune, is the moral 
of all his writing. His attitude toward religion is essentially 
that of Louis XI, though he is probably less superstitious than 
the latter. At the same time, he lacked the moral courage to 
regard religion as other than a cult, and Commines was a 
scrupulous observer of religious rites. 

Thus the effect of his work is depressing. We miss the en- 
thusiasm of a great purpose, the belief in the worthiness of a 
cause, a glint of any spirit of sacrifice and honor. The world 
which Commines lays bare is ignoble and corrupt — like his 
own soul it is tainted with an underlying falsehood. As he said, 
"Ceux qui gaignent ont toujours raison." But Commines is 
no man's fool: he observes with penetrating clarity and often 
justly. On the whole, his style matches his thought. In an 
age of bombast, he manages to be lucid and direct even if he 
is often digressive and never eloquent. His main value lies 
in his grasp of politics and the record he gives of his own age. 



PART II 

THE RENAISSANCE 



BOOK I 
HUMANISM AND THE REFORMATION 

CHAPTER I 

THE INFLUENCE OF ITALY AND THE 
RHETORIQUEUR POETS 

The great cultural movement called the Renaissance began 
in Italy and swept over Europe in the course of two centuries. 
The Rebirth It came to France in the sixteenth, following the 
in Italy campaigns of Charles VIII and Louis XII on Italian 

soil. Renaissance means " rebirth," and the rebirth was that of 
humanity itself aroused to a new sense of its own powers, new 
opportunities and new concepts of the physical universe. For 
Columbus discovered a New World (1492), and Copernicus laid 
the foundation of the modern system of astronomy (1517), both 
of which events made the medieval " fixity " a dead letter, quite 
aside from their influence on the development of commerce 
and the rise of a scientific spirit. The printing-press, a German 
contribution, stimulated the diffusion of knowledge and the 
interchange of ideas on all subjects. The Reformation — to 
some extent a reaction — represents a rebirth of the human 
conscience and a return to Christian origins. How conscious 
the awakening was is seen in the words Rabelais addressed to 
his friend Tiraqueau: 

Hors de cette epaisse nuit gothique, nos yeux se sont ouverts 
a l'insigne flambeau du soleil. 

And light and sunshine are forever associated with the period 
upon which we are now entering. 
But the Renaissance has also another side, no less important 

127 



128 THE INFLUENCE OF ITALY 

than those we have mentioned, in the revival of the art and lit- 
Greek and erature of the ancients. Being the seat of Roman 
Latin Art civilization, Italy possessed not only a large share 
of the relics "of antiquity but also the facilities for turning them 
to account when the enlightenment came. In Italy the awakening 
occurred earlier than elsewhere owing to her contact with the 
East and the early development of her city life. The forerunners 
were Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio: first, because they made 
Italian as well as Latin a vehicle of artistic expression; and 
second, in their intuition as to the truth of ancient thought and 
the beauty of classical style. In Petrarch especially, aptly 
called " the first modern man," the chief features of the revival 
are essentially revealed. Poet, scholar, diplomatist and patriot, 
he prized Greek and Latin literature in the spirit of a discoverer, 
and in his own sonnets he perfected a poetic form which other 
nations besides Italy were to regard as classical. So that when 
after 1400 many Greek scholars came to Italy, that country 
underwent a paganization of culture which is in sharp contrast to 
medieval thought as we have described it. Greek and Latin 
models now became supreme, a new style of architecture arose, 
academies and libraries were founded, and the modern self- 
sufficient political state came into being. Above all, human 
life is considered an object in itself; the problem is to gain 
mastery over it, by every means possible — wealth, statecraft 
and scientific inquiry — and to enjoy it for its own sake by the 
cultivation of art and literature. In short, the point of view is 
worldly (mondairi) and not theological. To this attitude, based 
on antiquity, we give the generic name of " humanism." 

The true humanist, then, was many-sided. The unity he 
sought he found in himself: in the development of his various 
faculties, physical as well as spiritual — for a healthy 
soul can flourish only in a healthy body; and the 
cult of the body is again a point in which the period is anti- 
medieval. In the beginning the great men of the Renais- 
sance were reconcilers of opoosing ideals. This was their 
" universality." Petrarch's position between St. Augustine and 
Vera;il is essentially that of Ficino (1433-1499), the harmonizer 
of Plato and Christianity, as it remains that of Erasmus (1465- 
1536) , scholar and reformer, and of Montaigne. Naturally, the 



HUMANISM 129 

highest product of humanism was aristocratic, since birth and 
wealth alone could provide the education and leisure needed to 
win distinction. Castiglione's II Cortegiano, or "Book of the 
Courtier" (1528), portrays this ideal. Here the "complete 
man," the uomo di virtu, is set forth in detail, and on this model 
are built the French honnete homme and the English gentleman. 
The courtier is the embodiment of the world's culture. His 
loftiest expression is the prince, the state his handiwork; the rest 
of humanity being but the marble out of which he — the political 
artist — " should hew the form that pleased his fancy best " 
(J. A. Symonds). Thus it is significant that the Renaissance 
type of man is primarily undemocratic, self-centered and mun- 
dane; yet he is gracious, well-bred and high-minded. His 
greatest and characteristic virtue is magnanimity. In making 
Prospero say, in the Tempest: 

" The rarer action is in virtue," 

Shakespeare has his character speak as a Renaissance gentleman 
should. 

In Italy, then, the Renaissance signifies a conscious cult of 
the beautiful. " Art," in the classic sense of harmony and order, 
is the co mm anding word. Beauty is divine; but 
its recovery by mankind demands cultivation, effort, 
rational endeavor. For a short period, at least, the Italians 
exploited the aesthetics of every subject. Confronted with the 
marvelous literatures of Athens and Rome, they sought to dis- 
cover and codify the rules whereby they were produced. Plato's 
Dialogues, Quintilian's Institutes of Oratory and Horace's Ars 
poetica were to them so many literal guides in the art of expres- 
sion, of which the Iliad, the Aeneid, the tragedies of Euripides, 
Sophocles and Seneca were the startling confirmation. Lastly, 
Aristotle's Poetics, in innumerable Italian interpretations, came 
to complete the list of critical works. If the Classic Age were 
to return, the Italians thought, it behooved them to " imitate " 
the ancients. The fact that it is never possible to prescribe, 
much less to follow logically, the means by which great literature 
and art are produced seems never to have occurred to them. 
In so far only as the imitation of the ancients was not an 



130 THE INFLUENCE OF ITALY 

imitation but a recreation did the men of the Renaissance pro- 
duce the great works for which they are known today. 

At the same time, no age ever carried further the enthusiasm 
for beautiful things. The papacy of Leo X (1513-1521) in its 
artists alone equalled the splendor of the age of Phidias; and, 
as for literature, the Orlando furioso (1516) of Ariosto is the 
best illustration of what aesthetic treatment could achieve. More- 
over, henceforth literary criticism is itself a branch of literature, 
and for France certainly the " restraining influence " of classical 
form becomes an invaluable acquisition. 

The Renaissance broke upon French shores in three distinct 
waves, or rather, after the first impact the French reverted to 
Italian inspiration on two different occasions. 

The first period is) roughly coincident with the reign of Francis 
I (1515-1547). This is the age of scholarly inquiry, of humanism 
Th R . . in general as a counter- current to the " medievalism " 
in France. of the church and the university (Sorbonne). Its 
Periods characteristic trait is enthusiasm born of a fresh 

and vivid experience. It saw the rise of great individuals, like 
Bude, Rabelais, Calvin; and it culminated in the Reformation, 
a movement which France shares with Germany and England 

The second period, extending from the accession of Henry II 
and covering the second half of the century, is concerned more 
particularly with literature. The aesthetic theories of the Italians 
now take hold of belles lettres; a new school of poetry, the 
Pleiade, arises and inaugurates the conscious " imitation " of 
the classics, while, on the other hand, bourgeois " common 
sense " reasserts itself and in the person of Montaigne establishes 
the boundaries of the human reason. 

Finally, the third influx of the Italian spirit occurs in the 
second quarter (1620-1640) of the seventeenth century. This 
phase of the movement is mainly social and based on the idea 
of decorum. The French salons begin, with their tendency 
toward preciosity of thought and speech, under the leadership 
of the Marquise de Rambouillet, herself an Italian; the rules 
of the drama are worked out according to Aristotelian treatises 
imported from Italy; the French Academy is founded, under 
Richelieu, for the purpose of regulating the language and litera- 
ture of the realm — a dictatorship which is the forerunner of 
the social and political absolutism of Louis XIV. 



THE AGE OF FRANCIS I 131 

During all this time Italy is the inspirer and guide of France. 
Not that other tendencies were not manifest nor that reactions 
did not occur. The Precellence du langage jrangais (1579) by 
Henri Estienne is directly aimed against the supposed superiority 
of Italian. But such protests were rare, for the reason that Italy 
after all was the road to the classics, and French Classicism was 
to be built on ideals and models furnished by Rome and Greece. 
In place of the scholastic " dogma," the Renaissance established 
a new principle of authority in Graeco-Roman tradition. In 
what respects the change represents a revival and yet a French 
creation this and the following chapters will show. 

When Francis ascended the throne, literature was in the bond- 
age of the rhetoriqueur school. The prevailing literary forms 
The Age of were those °f Machaut and Deschamps, and in longer 
Francis I compositions that of the Roman de la Rose. Except 
for a reaction against the tendency to Latinize (la muse latiale) 
and to be florid, these forms persist until the Pleiade. 

As for the King himself, although known as the restaurateur 
des bonnes lettres he merits this title less than one would at 
first suspect. Married to Claude, the eldest daughter of Louis 
XII, not only did he continue the Italian campaigns of his prede- 
cessors — until 1 defeated and captured at Pa via in 1525 — but his 
love of glory and display made him an active promoter of the 
revival. He was the friend and patron of great artists and sculp- 
tors: Leonardo da Vinci, Andrea del Sarto, Benvenuto Cellini 
and Jean Goujon. He knew personally and encouraged Casti- 
glione: it was his secretary, Colin dAuxerre, who first translated 
(1537) the Cortegiano into French. The Louvre (1515) and the 
handsome Renaissance wing of the Chateau de Blois testify to 
the encouragement Francis gave to architecture. Above all, he 
inaugurated, even if he did not always uphold, vital educational 
reforms. Under him Bude established the Trilingue et noble 
Academie (the future College de France), which attracted the 
attention of scholars the world over and mitigated the influence 
of the reactionary Sorbonne. Francis signed a concordat with 
the Pope which gave the former control over the French clergy. 
He established a royal press for the publication of Greek texts. 
In 1539 the royal decree of Villers-Cotterets substituted French 
for Latin in all legal documents. " How happy is France under 



132 THE INFLUENCE OF ITALY 

such a prince," says Erasmus in a letter of 1517. Nevertheless, 
Francis had neither the grasp nor the force of character to lead 
his age or give it direction. 

The first impression we thus get of the new epoch in France is 
of intellectual confusion. Humanism is in the air. Paris, Rouen 
and especially Lyons, open their gates to Italian scholars and to 
the influx of the new culture. The chief figures, Rabelais, Calvin, 
Dolet, Marguerite dAngouleme, seek the light of classical scholar- 
ship to guide them. Translations are eagerly made from Latin, 
Greek and Italian. Bude writes his Commentarii linguae graecae 
(1529), a pioneer work in the field of classical learning; and 
Ramus advocates the study of Plato (1543). Yet literature as 
such (poetry and the drama) shows little, if any, fundamental 
change. It took time for the new ideas to become clarified 
sufficiently to compel artistic expression; and, then, the medieval 
forms were not easily dislodged. Besides, the House of Bur- 
gundy, allied to Flanders during the second half of the fifteenth 
century, had given to poetry the tortured and complicated im- 
print of Flemish art. Gothic architecture became " flamboyant," 
and poetry rhetoriqueur. With the union of Burgundy to the 
French crown (1482) this influence spread. Marot, the one 
" modern " poet of the early sixteenth century, still uses the 
medieval forms. Thus the grands rhetoriqueurs represent the 
decadence of the later Middle Ages. To what lengths they car- 
ried their complicated measures is seen from the Grand et vrai 
art de pleine rhetorique (1522), by Pierre Fabri. 

Written for the Puy de Rouen, Fabri's work is a guidepost for 
the poetaster bent on winning royal or princely favor. The genres 
The treated are all lyrico-didactic: the rondeau, the 

£l*? as . ballade, the chant royal, and so on, to which may be 

queurs " added the epitre as the form in which Lemaire and 

Marot were to excel. Here, at least, we see the influence of Ovid's 
Heroides, rendered into French (1496) by Octovien de Saint- 
Gelais; and poetry assumes the trappings of classical imagery. 
Indeed, Fabri warns against tasteless Latinizing, a common fault 
of the time. But he has no inkling as to the real value of ancient 
and Italian models, and he never refers to the epic or the drama. 
What the versifier or faiseur would draw from this work were 
directions about rime, figures of speech, alliteration, sound-to- 



RHETORIQUEUR POETRY 133 

sense effects, and the like. Fabri is perhaps the first to urge the 
alternation of masculine and feminine endings, and he opposes 
the so-called lyric and epic cesuras (a reform that Lemaire was 
to put into effect) ; otherwise he merely confirms established 
views. 

Of the grands rhetoriqueurs, mentioned by Fabri as exemplars 
of their art, Meschinot and Cretin — " le bon Cretin au vers 
equivoque " — hold a prominent place. 

A Breton, Jean Meschinot (1420-1491) belonged to the en- 
tourage of Anne of Brittany, later the wife of Louis 
XII, and wrote much occasional verse and a political 
allegory, the Lunettes des princes. Like most of his associates, 
unable to see reason in life, Meschinot beholds the realm of 
reason through spectacles. He produced a huitain which made 
equally poor sense when read in thirty -two different ways. But 
he ably characterized Louis as an " innocent feint, tout fourre 
de malice," and he enjoyed great popularity. 

More representative of the school, however, is Guillaume 
Cretin (before 1525), who forms also the connecting link be- 
tween Burgundy and France proper. Cretin rose 
to be historiographer of Francis I, at whose behest 
he put the fabulous history of his country (beginning with Troy 
and including the Pseud o-Turpin) into verse, which still slumbers 
in manuscript form. Marot calls him " souverain poete frangais," 
which remained the verdict of contemporaries until it seems 
Rabelais ridiculed him as " Raminogrobis, vieux poete frangais " 
in his Pantagruel. The acme of Cretin's poetizing is seen in the 
elegiacal lines on Bissipat, with their absurd rime leonine: 

Bissipat, 
Qui eust pense que Mort anticipast. 
Ainsi ta vie et si tost dissipast. 

Still, he was not incapable of a natural, incisive note, particularly 
when he satirizes the clergy or pleads with his patron for money. 
With Jean Lemaire de Beiges we reach a poet of a distinctly 
higher order than his contemporaries. Rhetoriqueur that he is, 
, he has both personality and distinction. He was 

Lemaire born (about 1473) in the Low Countries at Bavai, 
de Beiges $ie Latinized form of which is Beiges. For some un- 



134 THE INFLUENCE OF ITALY 

known reason Fabri fails to record his name ; some think because 
of Lemaire's early death, variously placed between 1514 and 1520. 
He grew up in the household of his uncle Molinet, the histori- 
ographer of Burgundy, to whom he also owed several positions 
he held. Lemaire himself attributes his attachment to the muses 
to the persuasion of Cretin, who honored him with a visit. In 
1503 he entered the service of Margaret of Austria, and passed 
some time on her estates at Pont-dAin near Lyons, in which city 
Italian influences were then dominant. In fact, he later visited 
Italy and was the first to imitate the terza rima, in French. In 
1512 he became historiographer of Louis XII. Although his 
Concorde des deux langages (1511) advocates a harmonious co- 
operation of France and Italy, he had long been a supporter of 
Louis' nationalistic policy. Thus, while Lemaire is still a long 
way from being a real humanist, metrical ingenuity is not his first 
consideration and he gives evidence of a knowledge of classical 
culture, especially in his prose. Taken all in all, he begins the 
transition in poetry which leads through Marot to the Pleiade; 
and his technique was apparently carefully studied by both Du 
Bellay and Ronsard. 

His verse compositions are: the Temple d'honneur et de vertu, 
the Couronne margueritique, the Epistre de VAmant vert and the 
musical Plainte du desire. Titles as well as concept of these are 
thoroughly vhetoviqueuv. Yet with considerable variety and 
firmness of expression Lemaire unites occasional humor and a 
vivid sense of color. Brunetiere justly lauds the verses beginning: 

Un grave accent, musique larmoyable 
Est bien seant a ce jour pitoyable 
Pour parfournir nos lamentations. 

But his best poetic work remains the semi-humorous Amant vert. 
This consists of a letter supposedly sent by Margaret's dead 
parrot from the Netherworld. The poem is gracefully turned, 
reminiscent in substance and style of Vergil and particularly 
Ovid (the Amoves II, vi) , and appropriate in tone to the matter 
treated. Lemaire is not profound, but he is never commonplace. 
His chief work, however, is in prose. This is the ambitious 
Illustrations de Gaule et singulavites de Troie (1510-1513), a 
curious blending of erudition, pedantry and charming naivete; 



JEAN LEMAIRE 135 

incidentally, a mine of patriotic inspiration for the century 
and the source of Ronsard's Frantiade. Lemaire's idea was to 
revise the Troy story, that theme so dear to the Middle Ages, 
in accord with more reliable authorities. With this in mind, he 
followed during the first book the f abulations of Annius of Viterbo 
connecting in typical Renaissance fashion the mythical ancestors 
of the human race; thus Priam is related to Noah (le bon 
pere Noe) and Jupiter is identified with Osiris. In the sec- 
ond book, which treats of Troy proper, the model is Lorenzo Val- 
la's prose rendering of all the Iliad (1502), with the reservation 
always that Francus (a neglected son of Hector) is to become the 
ancestor of the French nobility — after the fall of Ilion — and 
thus the progenitor of the royal houses of France and Burgundy. 
Besides seeing in the work a sort of Almanach de Gotha, Le- 
maire's contemporaries (so Brunetiere suggests) were won by 
the style ■ sofutenu with its precieux coloring. Thus the author 
speaks of the " detroits d'insatiable avarice," the " rochers de 
cupidite effrenees/' the "plage d'outrage sanguinolent " ; and he 
makes Athena say: " Sejourne les pupilles . . . au miroir de 
ma speciosite celeste." Yet, such allegorizations are nothing 
new in French and when the occasion arises, as in depicting the 
idyll of Paris and Oenone, Lemaire is both simple and poetic, 
with touches recalling Sannazzaro, resident in France in 1501- 
1504. A trait which Lemaire does not share with his epoch is 
his scrupulous decency of expression. 

It may have been Lemaire's misfortune that he was ahead of 
his age. As it is, he gave impetus to both literature and art 
(he was also a musician), and we understand why Du Bellay 
acclaimed him as having " illustre et les Gaules et la langue, luy 
donnant beaucoup de mots et manieres de parler poetiques " 
(Defense et Illustration II, Ch. 2). 



CHAPTER II 

MAROT AND HIS IMMEDIATE FOLLOWERS 

Elusiveness has long been recognized as one of the main traits 
of Clement Marot. This is half his charm. He characterized 
himself in the following lines : 

Sur le printemps de ma jeunesse folle, 
Je ressemblois Farondelle qui vole 
Puis Qa, puis la: l'aage me conduisoit 
Sans paour ne soing, ou le cueur me disoit. 

And it is not only in his youth that he eludes us, but throughout 
his life, up to the day of his death. 

Of an apparently frivolous nature, more or less a temporizer 
as his position of valet de chambre to King Francis required, 
Marot has not a little courage, a wonderful command of the 
subtler shades of language, luminous clarity and the eternal 
quality of wit. La Bruyere, certainly not superficial, considered 
him more modern than Ronsard: 

II n'y a guere entre ce premier et nous que la difference de 
quelques mots. 

We must not look to Marot for lyric passion or depth of 
sentiment. His gifts are common sense, lightness of touch and a 
determination to say nothing that is not said well. In so far as 
he thus discards the fetters of medieval pedantry he represents 
the Gallic side of the Renaissance. 

His father, Jean Marot, had married a lady of Cahors in 
Provence. Here Clement was born in 1496 or 1497. When the 
Marot's D °y was ten > tne e ^ er Marot, anxious to have him 

Life succeed in the " rhetorical art," took him north to 

France proper. 

Que j'oubliay ma langue maternelle 
Et grossement apprins la paternelle 
Langue frangoyse, 

136 



MAROT 137 

is the poet's significant comment on this step. Thus Marot, like 
Monluc and Montaigne, is virtually a child of the south. 

Like Villon, he was not an industrious student, and humanly he 
blames his instructors. Even his knowledge of Latin was de- 
fective, as the inaccuracies of his translations show. But he was 
an extensive reader, and his library contained such works as the 
Spanish Celestina, Boccaccio's Fiammetta, various books con- 
demned by the Sorbonne, the chief Latin writers, the works of 
Villon and of course the Roman de la Rose. In verse his master 
was Jean Lemaire de Beiges, whom he ignorantly compares to 
Homer. Cretin was also a youthful admiration. Character- 
istically, however, he regarded court life as his most important 
teacher: 

La court du roy, ma maistresse d'escole. 

And, in fact, after a short period as a law student, when he 
was a member of the Basoche, Marot became page to Nicholas 
de Neufville, seigneur de Villeroy (1513). Henceforth he trod 
the uncertain path of princely favor. In 1515 he greeted the 
youthful Francis in his Temple de Cupido, with its burst of 
allegory but revealing also the poet's innate charm. Three years 
later he became secretary of Marguerite d'Angouleme, under 
whose influence his spiritual sympathies were broadened so as to 
make him at least a doubtful Protestant. His translation of the 
Sixth Psalm appeared in the edition of Marguerite's Miroir de 
Vdme pecheresse (1533). The Epistre du Despourveu, addressed 
to her in 1517, however, still shows the poet as a typical rhetori- 
queur: 

Ces motz finiz, demeure mon semblant 
Triste, transy, tout terny, tout tremblant, 
Sombre, songeant, sans seure soustenance, 
Dur d'esperit, desnue d'esperance, 
Melancolic, morne, marry, musant. 

And rhetoriquenr he remains until after 1524. 

In this year he accompanied the King to Italy and was present, 
if not actually wounded and made a prisoner, at Pavia (1525). 
On his return to Paris he was arrested and confined in the Cha- 
telet, whence, however, influential friends (among them a certain 
Lion Jamet) had him transferred to more comfortable surround- 



138 MAROT AND HIS IMMEDIATE FOLLOWERS 

ings at Chartres, where he was soon set at liberty. The charge 
was that Marot had broken the ecclesiastic rules as to fasting 
during Lent. However this may be, the poet whom the King 
finally liberated is the real Marot, the author of the Epistle to 
Bouchart, in which he denies his heresy, the famous Epistle to 
Jamet containing the Fable of the Lion and the Rat, and the 
Enfer — a satirical poem on his treatment in the Chatelet. All 
these show Marot's vigor, directness and dramatic power, in 
full play. 

In 1526 Francis appointed Marot to the post left vacant by 
his father's death. According to M. Lefranc, the same year marks 
also the beginning of the one serious love-affair of the poet's 
life. But the date is uncertain, just as it is doubtful that Anne 
dAlengon, the niece of Marguerite, inspired Marot's love — as 
Lefranc also maintains. The sincerity of the poet's emotion, 
however, can hardly be doubted, fleeting as it may have been; 
witness the lines : 

J'ayme le cueur de m'amye 
Sa bonte et sa doulceur, 
Je Tayme sans infamie 
Et comme un frere la soeur. 

Such frankness is matched only by the more characteristic note 
which Marot strikes in the Epigram satirizing the unjust execution 
of Samblangay, superintendent of finances (1527), and the de- 
licious Epistre au Roy pour avoir este derobe with its vivid char- 
acter sketch of the poet's rascally valet — 

Au demourant, le meilleur filz du monde. 

Marot is now famous, and to guard against pirated copies of his 
works he employs Geoffroy Tory to publish his poems under the 
playful title of Adolescence Clementine (1532). So, too, a feel- 
ing of piety for the poetic art prompts him to reedit Villon in 
1533 and to translate several of Petrarch's sonnets. Yet the times 
are fraught with danger, and a person of Marot's liberal associa- 
tions is none too secure. On October 17-18, 1534, the Protestants, 
goaded to action, placard the King's door with an attack on the 
Mass. Hesitating before, Francis now allows Parliament to act, 
and the result is that our poet is forced to flee. He goes first to 



MAROT 139 

Nerac, seeking the protection of Marguerite, but very soon moves 
to Italy, where he finds an asylum at the court of Francis' sister- 
in-law, the Duchess Renee of Ferrara. Here he meets the Pe- 
trarchist Tebaldeo and Serafino dall' Aquila — whose influence 
he shows in several huitains and particularly in his revival of 
the blason (a versified catalogue of physical traits) — and he 
celebrates his new protectress as the embodiment of vertu: 

De quoy Vertu perpetuoit sa vie: 
Dont il trouvoit sa perte et son soucy 
Moins ennuyeux. 

But the ornate and affected Ferrarese were not suited to one 
of Marot's frolicsome temper. Besides, his heretical leanings 
were distasteful to the Duke, Ercole d'Este, who did not share 
his wife's generous spirit. Marot longs for France, and thither 
he goes in 1537, after making a public disavowal of his " errors " 
with an apparently light heart. He thanks Francis officially for 
his return to grace in the Eglogue an Roy soubs les noms de Pan 
et de Robin, a mingling of the medieval and classical forms of 
the pastoral and one of the most biographically rich of Marot's 
works. In 1539 Francis seals the compact by presenting the poet 
with a house in the suburb of Saint-Germain-des-Pres. 

Meanwhile, however, Marot's enemies had not been idle. 
Profiting by the poet's equivocal attitude, a Norman priest, Fran- 
cms de Sagon — whom Marot had offended personally — 
launched against the absentee a truculent Coup d'essai, in which 
amid much other abuse occur the lines: 

Maro sans t est excellent poete 
Mais avec t il est tout corrompu. 

The quarrel that ensued is not without its interest. It marshaled 
the literary men of the time into two opposing camps: rhetori- 
queurs and Marotiques; and on the latter side were Desperiers, 
Fontaine and Mellin de- Saint-Gelais. The broadsides put forth 
by the opposing parties were adorned with wood- cuts of the 
grossest sort; thus printing joined in one of its earliest battles, 
and invective followed invective. As for the documents, the 
most noteworthy for its satire is the witty but scurrilous Valet 
de Marot contre Sagon, in which the poet hides under the name 



140 MAROT AND HIS IMMEDIATE FOLLOWERS 

of his servant Frippelippes. Finally, the matter was settled to 
Marot's advantage when the Confrerie des Cornards declared that 
even in Rouen Sagon was considered inferior to his opponent. 
The year 1538 sees Marot busy with a new edition of his works 
(including the Enfer and a Dialogue de deux amoureux) , which 
was finally printed by both his friend Dolet and the publisher 
Gryphius of Lyons. With the encouragement of the King and 
the help of Vatable — the Biblical scholar — Marot now works 
on his translation of the Psalter. This Saint Cancionnaire of 
thirty Psalms, whose couplets were sung according to popular 
tunes on the spinet, appeared in 1541 with a dedication to Francis. 
But when the Sorbonne protests against such profanation of 
the Bible, the King with characteristic weakness deserts his 
favorite, and Marot flees to Geneva (1542), never to see France 
again. There his Psalms were incorporated into the Protestant 
liturgy and republished in more than twenty-four editions before 
1550. They were thus the greatest poetic success of the time, 
though their author was not to profit by this popularity. After 
a year's sojourn in Geneva Marot left for Chambery and died the 
following year (1544) in Turin. 

In an epistle, A un sien amy, written shortly before 
his end, he takes leave of the world and propheti- 
cally voices the judgment of posterity with regard to his work: 

Ne voy tu pas, encore qu'on me voye 
Prive des biens et estats que j'avoye 
Des vieulx amys, du pays, de leur chere, 
De ceste Royne et maistresse tant chere, 
Qui m'a nourry (et si, sans rien me rendre, 
On m'ayt tollu tout ce qui se peult prendre), 
Ce neantmoins, par mont et par campaigne 
Le mien esprit me suit et m'accompaigne? 



Abandonne jamais ne m'a la Muse 

Et tant qu'ouy et nenny se dira 
Par l'univers le monde me lira. 

Thus, Marot is especially a writer of occasional verse. 
This was his forte, and in this field he remains the master. We 
may regret his lack of direction, the absence in him of any one 
lofty ideal, the inability to grasp and make his own the moral 



MAROT'S WORKS 141 

strength of Protestantism; what we cannot deny is his captivat- 
ing charm and his great virtuosity. 

His Epistles are his best product. Mostly written in ten- 
syllable verse, which he handles with great skill, they are rapid 
in movement, picturesque and concrete in language, and 
humorous, pathetic, pleading or satiric, as the poet wishes them 
to be. Take the detail of a passage like the following from the 
Epistle to Jamet: 

Trouva moyen et maniere et matiere 
D'ongles et dens, de rompre la ratiere, 
Dont maistre rat eschappe vistement, 
Puis meit a terre un genouil gentement, 
Et en ostant son bonnet de la teste, 
A mercie mille foys la grand beste, 
Jurant le Dieu des souris et des ratz 
Qu'il luy rendroit; 

and contrast it with the distinguished grace of the three-sylla- 
bled Epistle A une Damoysette malade: 

Ma mignonne, 
Je vous donne 
Le bon jour; 
Le sejour 
C'est prison. 
Guerison 
Recouvrez, 
Puis ouvrez 
Votre porte, 
Et qu'on sorte 
Vistement. 

Or compare the familiar tone of one of Marot's C oqs-a-V asne — 
thus the poet designates his helter-skelter discussion of contem- 
porary topics in epistle form: 

Tu ne sQais pas? Thunis est prinse, 
Triboulet a freres et sceurs, 
Les Angloys s'en vont bons danseurs, 
Les Allemans tiennent mesure. 

On ne preste plus a usure, 
Mais tant qu'on veut a interest. 

A propos de Perceforest, 
Lit on plus Artus et Gauvain? 

with the sustained utterance of one of his Elegies: 



142 MAROT AND HIS IMMEDIATE FOLLOWERS 

Ton gentil cueur si haultement assis, 
Ton sens discret a merveille rassis, 
Ton noble port, ton maintien asseure, 
Ton chant si doulx, ton parler mesure, 
Ton propre habit, qui tant bien se conforme 
Au naturel de ta tres belle forme. 

Again esprit is the note of his epigrams, where he imitates 
Martial. The rondeau with the refrain Au bon vieux temps is 
in most anthologies, while the ballade, De frere Lubin, is also 
well known. 

As for the sonnet, he did little more than introduce the genre 
into French and lay the foundation for the standard French 
type (where the tercets rime ccd eed or ede) — yet this is not 
unimportant in view of the popularity of the sonnet with the 
Pleiade. 

Marot was not a successful translator, though his range in- 
cluded Erasmus as well as Vergil and Ovid ; nor was he a striking 
innovator in rhythm. In both respects, his Psalms perhaps are 
an exception. Obviously, he was not exactly at home in the lofty 
religious atmosphere of Hebraic inspiration; but his renderings 
are singularly close at times and his arrangement of rimes is 
original. The translation of the Thirty -third Psalm contains the 
ten-line strophe which we later find in the French ode: 

Resveillez- vous, chascun fidele, 
Menez en Dieu joye orendroit. 
Louange est tresseante et belle 
En la bouche de rhomme droict. 

Sur la doulce harpe, 

Pendue en escharpe, 

Le Seigneur louez. 

De luz, d'espinettes 

Sainctes chansonnettes 

A son Nom jouez. 

In short, it was Marot's function to deliver French poetry 
from rhetoriqueur complexities and to guide it into the high- 
road of clear and sensible expression. On these grounds the 
contempt with which Ronsard and his followers treated him is 
unmerited. At the same time, he utterly lacks the afflatus of 
the Renaissance, its great enthusiasm and its towering thoughts. 



MAROT'S FOLLOWERS 143 

It is interesting that in such an age a poet could display " the 
literary characteristics of the ordinary Frenchman" (Saints- 
bury) . This is at once his achievement and his limitation. 

Of Marot's immediate successors, the so-called Ecole marotique, 
little need be said. In general, they maintain the position 
The Maro- outlined above. Among them are Charles Fontaine, 
tiques L a Borderie, Eustorg de Beaulieu, Charles de Sainte- 

Marthe and Mellin de Saint-Gelais. 

Fontaine (1515-1570?), the honest defender of the " master," 
was also the champion of the rights of love. An ardent dis- 
cussion divided the literary circles of the years 1541-1546. In 
some respects a revival of the dispute launched by Jean de Meun 
on the nature of woman, it assumed an entirely new aspect under 
the influence of Neo-Platonism, recently imported from Italy 
and cultivated by Marguerite d'Angouleme. With her and 
Rabelais' share in the quarrel we shall deal presently. 
Fontaine's part in it was to answer a cynical attack on the fair 
sex by La Borderie, who in his Amye de Court (1541) had repre- 
sented the " court lady " as a materialist. To this slur Fontaine 
replied with his Contr'Amye de Court, which, rambling and 
prolix as it is, contains an interesting adaptation of Plato's con- 
ception of " universal love": 

Amour partout sa bonne graine seme, 
Et de la vient que toute chose s'ayme. 

Eustorg de Beaulieu (1505-1552) continued Marot's blasons, 
which had become popular, together with other forms of the 
Marotic type; and having reformed, morally and religiously, he 
published at Geneva religious songs set to his own music. 
Charles de Sainte-Marthe (1512-1555) at least is frank enough 
to say: 

Que dira Ton de me veoir si hardy 
De composer apres toy, 6 Clement? 

His " rather weak attempts at Platonism " have the merit of form- 
ing one of the links between Marguerite's court at Nerac and the 
flourishing Renaissance city of Lyons, where his poems appeared 
in 1540. 



144 MAROT AND HIS IMMEDIATE FOLLOWERS 

Thus Mellin de Saint-Gelais (1481-1558) is the only notable 
standard-bearer of the group. A natural son of Octovien (see 
above), he was highly cultured, quite a student of Italian and 
a rival of Marot for the credit of having introduced the sonnet 
into French. He was aptly called I'Homere des vers d'album. 
Mellin was a favorite at the court of Henry II, who liked his 
Italianate manner. Mignardises is the name of the formal 
blossoms which he culled for the court circles of his time (1547). 
He prepared an edition of the French translation by Colin of the 
Cortegiano, and he himself translated into French the Sophonisba 
of Trissino, a play that is important in the development of the 
drama. In triumphing over Mellin, Ronsard triumphs over the 
Marotic muse in its Italianized form. An excellent sample of 
Mellin's style is found in his rendering of a sonnet by Sannaz- 
zaro, also translated by the English poet Wyatt. We cite the 
first quatrain: 

Voyant ces monts de veue ainsi lointaine, 
Je les compare a mon long desplaisir: 
Haut est leur chef, et haut est mon desir, 
Leur pied est ferme, et ma foy est certaine. 



CHAPTER III 

RABELAIS AND CALVIN — THE EPICUREAN 
AND THE STOIC 

FRANgois Rabelais and Jean Calvin are respectively the pos- 
itive and negative poles of the Renaissance. Drawing alike 
their inspiration from the newly discovered classics, with an 
equal opposition to medieval pedantry, they yet represent the 
parting of the ways in their conflicting ideals: Rabelais the 
exuberant apostle of freedom, and Calvin the rigid disciplin- 
arian. To the one, human nature appeared essentially healthy 
and hence trustworthy ; to, the other it appeared totally depraved 
and therefore in pressing need of renewed contact with the Deity. 
Thus, if personal emphasis is characteristic of this period, they 
are its representatives. Moreover, the principles for which 
they stand continue in favor through the epoch of French 
Classicism. As regards point of view, Moliere and Racine are 
their descendants. 

Today we think of Rabelais primarily as a humorist. We are 
swept along by his laughter — the expression of his prodigious 
Frangois vitality — and we are apt to overlook his wisdom. 
Rabelais j) oes j^ no ^. gay - m y s dedication to his readers: 

Vray est qu'icy peu de perfection 
Vous apprendrez, si non en cas de rire; 

and quote Aristotle to the effect that 

rire est le propre de Phomme? 

His contemporaries, however, knew him as a great scholar and 
physician, whose mirth — gross and indecent as it is — is sec- 
ondary to the profounder qualities of the man. In him, if any- 
where, the asceticism of the Middle Ages finds a corrective in an 
exultant but thoughtful expression of life; and this side of him 
should not be overlooked. But his genius has also another 

145 



146 RABELAIS AND CALVIN 

characteristic aspect — strange as it may seem — in his art as 
a writer. Rabelais is one of the great moulders of French prose. 
This shows itself in a tremendous rush of words, overflowing the 
page or concentrated into telling phrases, as the case may be, 
but always with an underlying rhythm, an indication of the truly 
masterful nature of the man. 

It is not known exactly when he was born. The traditional 
date is 1483 — the year of the birth of Luther and Raphael. This 
is certainly wrong, as is the tradition that Rabelais' father 
was an inn-keeper of Chinon, a town in Touraine. It is now es- 
tablished that his father was Antoine de Rabelais, seigneur de 
Chavigny, a barrister of Chinon, and owner of the farm and vine- 
yard of La Deviniere, where Frangois was born at a date esti- 
mated as 1494 or 1495. Little is known of his early education 
except that it was pedantically medieval and that the Thubal 
Holofernes satirized in the Gargantua was probably his first 
preceptor. He doubtless went to the Francisican convent of La 
Baumette, near Angers. In 1519 he qualified as jrere mineur at 
Fontenay-le-Comte in Poitou, and here it was that he underwent 
the humanistic influences that were to shape his career. 

In general, these were Greek studies, pursued in conjunction 
with his brother-monk Pierre Amy under the supervision of Bude. 
The two friends also discussed problems with Andre Tiraqueau, 
later a member of the Parisian Parliament, and with Geoffroy 
d'Estissac, Bishop of Maillezais. But difficulties were soon to 
disrupt this learned coterie. Tiraqueau had written a pamphlet 
attacking the female sex, the De legibus conubialibus et jure 
maritali (which Rabelais later quotes in his Third Book) ; and the 
controversy to which the pamphlet gave rise, as well as the fact 
that the young humanists were suspected of friendliness towards 
the religious reformers, led to the flight of Amy and the transfer 
of Rabelais to the more lenient Benedictine order at Maillezais 
(1524). 

The succeeding years were crowded with events. It is uncer- 
tain how long Rabelais tarried at Maillezais but it is probable 
„ G that he soon began the study of medicine at Paris 

et ' and of law at Bourges. In 1530, we know, he re- 

Pantagruel " ce ived his baccalaureate in medicine at Montpellier, 
and he then gave lectures to large audiences on the Aphorisms 



RABELAIS 147 

of Hippocrates and the Ars Medica of Galen. By 1532 he had 
migrated to Lyons, and here in the thriving Renaissance city 
he divided his time between his profession as a physician and 
the editing and publication of books. 

Among the latter he either wrote or merely edited a chap- 
book called Les grandes et inestimables Chroniques du grand et 
enorme geant Gargantua, following the general lines of an Ar- 
thurian prose-romance. Published in 1532, this work was im- 
mensely popular, more copies of it being sold in two months 
" than there will be Bibles in nine years " — as Rabelais himself 
testifies. The account which he there gives of Grangousier, 
Galemelle and their son Gargantua, who, transported over the 
sea by Merlin, takes service with King Arthur, was followed in 
the same year by a far superior continuation, the Pantagruel, 
and a facetious almanac, the Pantagrueline Prognostication. 
The first of these is now the Second Book of Rabelais' immortal 
work. 

In form of a romance, the Pantagruel relates the origin, birth, 
education and adventures of the hero, interspersed with copious 
_ references to burning questions of the day and an 

account of Pantagruel 7 s sojourn in Orleans and Paris 
[Chs. II-XXXIII], which doubtless reflects Rabelais' own ex- 
perience. Rabelais' sources were practically everything he read: 
from classical authors to the Italian Folengo (from whose Cingar 
he took the attributes of Panurge), and books of travel and 
science. But the background of the work rests on the romances 
of chivalry, of which the Pantagruel is a burlesque interwoven 
with modern instances and classical illustrations. 

Thus Pantagruel, originally a salt-water demon in the 
mysteres, is in part Rabelais himself, who later [Book III] apos- 
trophizes his hero as 

le meilleur petit et grand bon hornet que oncques cei<m ^e. 

Toutes choses prenoit en bonne partie, tout acte intei^ 
bien. Jamais ne se tourmentoit, jamais ne se scandalisoit. 

Book II describes the pedantic collection of the Library of St. 
Victor, provides an antidote to this pedantry in the admirable 
Letter of Gargantua to his son, aptly called " the triumphal 
hymn of the Renaissance," and records Pantagruel's disputations 



148 RABELAIS AND CALVIN 

on the study and practice of law. It then relates his meeting 
with Panurge, companion and counterpart to himself, whom 
Rabelais describes in terms borrowed from the account of 
Marot's " valet de Gascogne." The actual plot of this Book, 
however, is chiefly an attack on the Dipsodes or Thirsty, to 
which Gargantua summons his son and which includes an 
account of a voyage around the Cape of Good Hope to Utopia 
or Cathay in India. 

Rabelais was now physician to the hospital of the Pont-du- 
Rhone in Lyons. But his studies could not have been exacting, 
for he maintained his connection with printers and writers, 
addressing a remarkable letter to Erasmus in 1532, and accepting 
early in 1534 an invitation to go to Rome in the suite of Jean du 
Bellay, soon to be made a cardinal. All this time, however, he 
was busy on an elaboration of his romance, and soon after his 
return from Rome (the close of 1534) he brought out the Vie 
inestimable du grand Gargantua, pere de Pantagruel — now 
reckoned as Book I. The year 1534 was the date of the Placards 
(see Ch. II) , and the sneering remarks in the book on the doctors 
of the Sorbonne probably made Rabelais cautious of his own 
safety; at any rate, by March, 1535, he had been so long absent 
from his post at the hospital that another was elected to fill his 
place. In July of that year he was once more in Rome, this 
time as physician to the Cardinal. 

The Gargantua, meant to replace the earlier chap-book of this 
name, is a more elaborate performance than the Pantagruel, 
whose general lines it follows in the manner of the 
enfances of some epic hero. There is a prologue 
burlesquing the medieval device of the literal and figurative 
meanings or sensus, which has led many commentators astray 
in the belief that the book veils a political or religious attack. 
The book proper gives a description of the young giant's birth 
and education; Gargantua steals the bells of Notre-Dame and 
listens to the amusing protest of Janotus de Bragmardo, a 
pedant of the Sorbonne; his tutor Ponacrates initiates him into 
the new learning by first demonstrating the absurdities of the 
old, and so on. But the central episode of the book is the war 
between Grangousier and Picrochole, ending in the foundation 
of the Abbaye de Theleme. 



RABELAIS 149 

This war, beneath which lies a family squabble of the Rabelais 
and their neighbors in Touraine, the Sainte-Marthes, satirizes in 
the guise of an attack of the cake-bakers of Lerne on the shep- 
herds of Grandgousier the frivolous causes that may lead nations 
to fight — an obvious echo of the pacifistic ideals of Erasmus. 
The Abbaye de Theleme, a monastery without " rule," open to 
both sexes with the right of free entrance and departure, symbol- 
izes Rabelais' concept of humanism. A model of Renaissance 
architecture, this institution has but one precept, Fay ce que 
vouldras — considering that " men who are free, well-bred, 
well-educated, conversant with genteel folk, have by nature an 
instinct and spur which impels them to virtuous actions and 
restrains them from vice; and this they call honor." The atti- 
tude is aristocratic: the model of the Cortegiano doubtless hov- 
ered before the author's mind; but the important fact is that 
Rabelais invokes instinct and not dogma, freedom and not re- 
striction, for the salvation of man. If we add hereto the 
observation that the Thelemites never have an idle moment we 
get activity, or work, as the other essential condition of human 
happiness. These, together with Pantagruel's trait of cheerful- 
ness even in the face of adversity, are the leading features of 
Pantagruelisme or the Rabelaisian philosophy of life. 

In March, 1536, we find Rabelais once more in Paris attending 
a dinner to Dolet, who speaks of him on this occasion as " the 
glory of the healing art." Indeed, the next few years are devoted 
to medicine. Rabelais takes his Master's and Doctor's degrees at 
Montpellier ; there and at Lyons he dissects a human body — an 
event which Dolet has celebrated in Latin verse; and but for a 
Latin poem on the exploits of Guillaume du Bellay, and new 
editions of the Gargantua and Pantagruel, he is not active in 
literature. Not until 1546 was the Third Book so far written as 
to be ready for the printer. In the meantime, Francis I had taken 
stringent action against the Protestant heresy. Rabelais, whose 
courage was tempered by common sense or, as he states, extended 
" jusqu'au feu exclusivement," again took his precautions. The 
Third Book appeared with a thoroughly patriotic preface, doubt- 
less inspired by the fact that France was having trouble with 
Spain, and with a ten-year privilege from Francis calculated to 
prove the author's orthodoxy. Nevertheless, Rabelais found it 



150 RABELAIS AND CALVIN 

prudent to flee to Metz, where he remained as town physician 
until the summer of 1547. 

Thus the Third Book, which is contemporaneous with the 
Querelle des femmes (see Ch. II), is in the opinion of M. Lefranc 
a document in the quarrel. Certainly Rabelais' 
treatment of the sex is far from flattering. Panurge, 
now governor of Salmigondin, has gone heavily into his revenue 
(mange son ble en herbe), and when taken to task by Pantagruel 
he enters upon a rollicking but eloquent eulogy of Debt as the 
unifying principle of the universe. He treats this theme first 
in the large, under the heading of the " macrocosm," and then in 
the small as the " microcosm " (here choosing the Fable of the 
Belly and the Members for his illustration) — a procedure em- 
ployed later by Pascal, who draws on this passage. Then 
Panurge, who had pretended to be miserable, suddenly changes 
his tone and proposes to marry. This leads to a tirade against 
divination, extending from Cicero to Cornelius Agrippa, whom 
Rabelais humorously calls Her Trippa. Finally, the attack on 
women — strong throughout the Book — reaches its climax in 
the mouth of Rondibilis, the physician: 

Quand je dis femme, je dis un sexe tant fragile, tant variable, 
tant muable, tant inconstant et imparfaict, que Nature me semble 
(parlant en tout honneur et reverence) s'estre esgaree de ce bon 
sens par lequel elle avoit cree et forme toutes choses, quand elle 
a basti la femme. 

As a piece of " learned drollery," much of this section is indebted 
to borrowing from Rabelais' friend Tiraqueau, as we noted above. 
The upshot of the discussion is that Pantagruel, Panurge and 
Frere Jean decide to visit the oracle of La Dive Bouteille in 
Cathay and consequently equip themselves for the long voyage 
thither. 

Once more Rabelais returns to Rome, whence he writes a 
series of letters (La Sciomachie) on the festivities held by his 
patron; and he seeks friends and supporters in the Cardinal de 
Lorraine and others. About this time (1551) he was appointed 
by Jean du Bellay to the vacant cure of Meudon. In 1552 he 
published his Fourth Book, which despite his usual precautions 
was condemned by the Sorbonne and forbidden by Parliament 
to be sold. But before the printing was complete, he had resigned 



RABELAIS 151 

the positions he held — the reason for this step is unknown — and 
he utterly disappeared from view. He must have died before 
May, 1554, the approximate date of the epigram entitled Rabelais 
trepasse. An obscure ending for one of the keenest, wisest and 
most genial of writers; a man admired and loved by his con- 
temporaries, who doubtless revelled in his romance though they 
hardly saw in it one of the greatest works of all French literature. 
The voyage to Cathay or India via the Northwest passage, 
planned in the Third, is carried out in the Fourth Book. The 
Odyssey of Pantagruel and his companions takes the 
Book IV travelers to a series of islands, in each of which 
some human infirmity or abuse is held up to ridicule. Thus 
Procuration is infested with the Chicanoux or Lawyers; Tapinois 
is ruled by Lent, a revolting, misshapen creature; Papefigues 
belongs to people who scorn the Pope, just as Papimanes are 
those who adore him. As elsewhere in his writings, Rabelais 
here mingles the real and the fanciful: the episode of Panurge's 
sheep [Ch. VI] and the description of the great storm at sea 
[Ch. XVIII] are mosaics of fact and imagination. But he also 
knows and uses the literature of geographical discovery, and 
again he amazes us with his erudition. 

A Fifth and concluding Book appeared after Rabelais' death; 
first in sixteen chapters, the so-called Isle sonnante (1562), and 
then as Le cinquieme et dernier livre des faits et 
dits heroiques du bon Pantagruel (1564). Thus its 
authenticity is doubtful. There are evident interpolations, the 
allegorizing is overdone and the tone is severe, at times strident. 
On the other hand, countless passages show that an outline by 
Rabelais himself was used. Here, in addition to the Isle son- 
nante where the voyagers encounter such ecclesiastical " birds " 
as Clergaux, Cardingaux, and Papegaut, Pantagruel and his 
company visit the haunts of the Chats-fourres or Furred Law- 
cats and the kingdom of Dame Quintessence or Abstraction, and 
finally reach the priestess Babuc, who leads them to La Dive 
Bouteille. It is significant that the answer to Panurge's elabo- 
rate questionings, as given by the oracle, is the simple word 
Trine. " Car Trine," says Rabelais, " est un mot celebre et 
entendu de toutes nations et nous signifie: Buvez." In other 
words, " experience " is the solvent of life, and on this note the 
romance ends. 



152 RABELAIS AND CALVIN 

The paradox of Rabelais is the contrast between his exuber- 
ance and his unshakable sanity. He addresses his work to 
drinkers, and drinking is his recurrent symbol; he 
Summary affirms that he wrote his livre seigneurial while 
beuvant et mangeant. This is far from being derision. It is 
the affirmation of life itself: the resolve to live it and the 
courage to see it through. For experience alone can keep us 
sound and sane; whereas speculation, abstraction, monastic rule 
and abnegation — when placed in control — wreck Nature and 
are its negation. Among moderns, only Goethe has this philo- 
sophic vision. As scholars have been everlastingly pointing 
out, the quotations in Rabelais, the borrowings, the references 
and the allusions, if put together would constitute a small 
encyclopedia. The vast erudition of the Renaissance is liter- 
ally there on the printed page. The wonder is that it is so 
well fused, so flowing, so much a part of the common purpose. 
Titanic is the suitable word: characters, events, details — 
whether it be the accoutrement of Gargantua riding to Paris on his 
giant mare, or the description of the storm at sea, or Panurge's 
excursus on debt — everything is tributary to one large, over- 
flowing stream of thought and expression. And the reason for 
this, as Bruntiere says, is that the work is a prose poem. " Elle 
en a Papparence et Failure; elle en a l'inspiration profonde; elle 
en a le charme ou le seduction du style: on pourrait dire qu'elle 
en respire encore et surtout Tenthousiasme." 

But having made this assertion, we should observe some dis- 
tinctions. The four or five books of the Gargantua and Panta- 
gruel are in a sense coextensive with their author's life. Hence 
the repetitions and changes in point of view. This many-sided- 
ness is typical of the Renaissance itself. The first two books 
stand for the earlier period of humanism, when the " new en- 
thusiasm " and the Reformation are still indistinguishable: 
Grandgousier's letter to his son refers to the " free will," which, 
however, must be guided by " grace." In general, a spirit of 
benevolence prevails, which is indeed the keynote of the program 
outlined by Gargantua for Pantagruel's direction. But with 
the Third Book the tone changes and becomes aggressive — just 
as patriotism is underscored, and policies and discoveries that 
are French are upheld (see Book IV). Not only does Rabelais 



SUMMARY OF RABELAIS 153 

now poke fun at the medieval spirit, he strikes at its foundations 
and excoriates its specific and lasting abuses: Physis and An- 
tiphysis are represented as rival progenitors, and the offspring 
of the latter are all "fools and senseless people," not excepting 
les demoniacles Calvins, imposteurs de Geneve. In addition, 
the work as a whole betrays its medieval basis, which it cannot 
entirely shake off. It is humorous and grotesque, but unaes- 
thetic. In particular, the attitude towards women — des femmes 
je n'ai cure — is not only temperamental, it is directly medieval ; 
for all his references to Plato (and there are many), Rabelais 
is out of sympathy with the the Neo-Platonists and especially 
with Marguerite d'Angouleme. But this again is in harmony 
with his conviction that all doctrine, all education must be an 
expansion, a development, not a suppression, of Nature's gifts. 
Egotism, if you will, but not " ambition and self-interest," for 
in Rabelais being and action, nature and life are one — a 
thoroughly French point of view (see Introduction) . It is well to 
remember that Rabelais was a physician. 

As we have seen, he came to literature through humanism; that 
is, via Bude, Erasmus, Politian, Sir Thomas More, and all the 
rest. He is the first to represent the afflatus of the Renaissance 
in French, and he does so preeminently as a realist. This ex- 
plains his style, which again is of a piece with himself. He does 
not portray impressions, for he lacks our modern subjectivity. 
Rabelais is never sentimental. But Panurge, Pantagruel, Frere 
Jean, Gargantua are as real in his pages as if we saw them our- 
selves — the figures are on a large scale, like the Moses of Michel- 
angelo; that is their characteristic feature. As for words and 
expressions, they flow from his pen in abundance but also with 
precision. How he sketches each detail of the great storm; 
how controlled in its eloquence is the praise of Debt; and, on 
the other hand, how riotous are the verbs designating the rolling 
of Diogenes' tub! A single phrase, Je me pers en ceste contem- 
plation, is the model of Pascal's Notre imagination se perd dans 
cette contemplation. As for the sources of this vocabulary, it 
is drawn from every conceivable source: dialects, foreign tongues, 
classics, contemporaries like Geoffroy Tory and Marot, even the 
rhetoriqueurs and Villon. Modern French is indebted to Rabelais 
for more than six hundred words. 



154 RABELAIS AND CALVIN 

Thus Rabelais is a giant among men ; an expression of French 
common sense wedded to elemental, earthborn strength and 
humor. Jonathan Swift and Sterne are among his English fol- 
lowers; whereas in France, in addition to Moliere, Montaigne 
and Anatole France have understood him best. Without Rabelais, 
the He des Pingouins is unthinkable. 

In a sermon of 1516 Luther speaks of " Our Picards and other 
schismatics." Such a one was Jean Calvin, or really Cauvin, 

j born at Noyon, in 1509. Compared to Rabelais, the 

jovial and robust son of Touraine, Calvin the Picard 
was high-strung, dyspeptic, solitary and disputatious. There is 
little doubt that he waged a continual battle with himself, his 
prodigious productivity being the triumph of an imperious and 
indomitable will over a frail physique. But like all " heroes of 
the spirit," forced to struggle alone, he saw life intensely but 
narrowly, opposition was to him anathema, and once well started 
his mind went forward in a groove, carving out geometrical, rec- 
tilinear figures for the administration — and as he profoundly 
believed, the salvation — of man. Calvin was born to be a 
Protestant a outrance. However, the Renaissance needed him, 
and it is part of his glory that his influence in literature is second 
only to what it is in theology. 

Mindful of the boy's fervid nature and with an eye to the prac- 
tical, Gerard Calvin directed his son's education at first towards 
the church. The Cathedral loomed large in the little town of 
Noyon, and Gerard, who was a lawyer, served as its attorney. 
Thus he secured for his twelve-year-old son an ecclesiastical 
appointment, carrying a slight income, to which was added 
somewhat later another — this practice being common in France 
at the time and requiring of the boy little more than that he 
should undergo the tonsure. But in 1523 Jean was sent to Paris, 
first to the College de la Marche, where Cordier gave him system- 
atic training in classical Latin, and then, somewhat against his 
will, to the College de Montaigu with its austere rule and strict 
discipline in dialectics. The story that Calvin bore the nick- 
name at school of " the Accusative " is probably a legend. It is 
certain that he made influential friends and that he was mentally 
alert and interested. 

Already the Reformation was in the air. Luther's Ninety-Five 



CALVIN'S LIFE 155 

Theses against indulgences had been posted on the church door 
at Wittenberg in 1517, and in 1521 the Faculty of Theology in 
Paris had formally denounced the Lutheran " heresy." Moreover, 
France had her own reformers though of a milder, less radical 
sort. Lefevre d'Etaples, also a Picard, early translated the 
Psalms, upheld the doctrine of the Word of God and justification 
by the faith in a Commentary on the Pauline Epistles, and in 
1523 translated the New Testament — an act which roused the 
watchfulness of the Sorbonne. But whatever interest the young 
Calvin took in these preliminary skirmishes, we have no reason 
to believe that his attitude was other than humanistic: a sympathy 
for the benignity rather than the heterodoxy of the enlightenment. 
And he maintained this attitude until 1533, which thus becomes 
the turning point in his career. 

Meanwhile, Gerard started his son in a new direction by train- 
ing him for the law. At Orleans, whither Calvin was sent in 1528, 
he won a reputation as a rising jurist, and at Bourges, one year 
later, he continued his legal studies under the celebrated Alciat 
and began the study of Greek. Both influences were soon to bear 
fruit. After a serious falling out with the Cathedral chapter at 
Noyon, Gerard died in 1531, and, left to his own choice, Calvin 
settled in Paris as a devotee of the new learning, to which he now 
added the study of Hebrew. The result is that in 1532 he pub- 
lishes a Commentary on Seneca's De dementia, which enrolls 
him under the humanistic banner. Not unlike the Gargantua in 
one point, this work breathes the hopefulness of the early 
Renaissance. Its learning is unquestionable — Calvin cites one 
hundred and fifty-five Latin and twenty -two Greek authors — its 
judgments are sound and scholarly, and if it discusses the duties 
of a king it does so without animus, in the same spirit in which 
it demonstrates the weakness of Stoicism and the superiority of 
Christianity, which appeals to the affections and " does not 
forbid tears." Obviously, it is primarily the work of a scholar 
and not of a theologian. 

But the decisive event was close at hand. In November, 1533, 
Calvin's friend Cop was inaugurated as rector of the University 
of Paris. The speech on this occasion dealt with the Beatitudes, 
which are interpreted as proof of the good-will of God towards man 
and as opposed to the teaching of the Old Testament. The posi- 



156 RABELAIS AND CALVIN 

tion, while characteristic of Calvin, was not in itself provocative, 
but it was stated in phrases obviously culled from Erasmus and 
Luther, and the address, which is partly in Calvin's own hand- 
writing, sought to commit the Sorbonne to the Protestant doc- 
trine. This was more than the reactionary University could 
tolerate, and after a futile defense Cop was forced to flee. 
Calvin also fled, unfortunately leaving the incriminating papers 
behind, and henceforth his life is that of a wanderer and finally 
of an exile. 

The immediate reason for Calvin's declaration of attitude 
is unknown. Perhaps it was merely the indiscretion of youth. 
At any rate, a stand had been taken — and the die was cast. 
Calvin thereby became the champion of the non-German side of 
the Reformation, though only indirectly in France through the 
effect of his writings ; his life work was to be performed beyond 
her borders. For a while he merely keeps moving; he goes to 
Noyon, then to Arigouleme, next to Nerac, the seat of Mar- 
guerite's court, then back to Paris. Twice he undergoes a short 
imprisonment. At last, there comes the day of the Placards 
(October 18, 1534), and Calvin flees to Bale, whither Cop had 
preceded him. 

Here, in March, 1536, Calvin published the first Latin version 
of his Institution de la religion chretienne. The first draft was 
The "Insti- a small octavo of some five hundred and twenty 

tution " pages, intended as a "brief manual " for those whose 
religion was defamed in France. For Calvin was of course un- 
aware that in subsequent revisions his work was to grow into 
the apologia of Protestantism in general. At the moment it 
behooved him to point out that his French coreligionists were 
not the " anarchists," not the " enemies of peace and order," 
such as Francis I was representing them to their German breth- 
ren. And so in a letter, which is remarkable both for its 
elevation and its force, prefixed to the book, Calvin reminds 
the King that it is the duty of the monarch to acknowledge 
himself the minister of God; that no kingdom can prosper that 
is not ruled by God's word; that sinners as the Protestants are 
and having nothing to boast of but God's mercy, their doctrine 
is yet superior to the sovereignties of this world: 



CALVIN'S LIFE 157 

Car elle n'est nostre; mais de Dieu vivant et de son Christ; 
lequel le Pere a constitue Roy, pour dominer d'une mer a l'autre, 
et depuis les fleuves jusques aux fins de la terre. 

Calvin then attacks the clergy, the instigators of the accusation, 
and refutes the charges against the Protestants, point by point. 
The early Christian fathers condemn the errors of the present 
Church of Rome: the celibacy of the priests, the doctrines of fast- 
ing and the " real presence," and the withholding of the sacra- 
ment from the people. Finally, the King is urged to read the 
exposition of religion that follows. 

The letter was a courageous appeal, couched in courteous yet 
trenchant language, and impeccable in its logic — given the major 
premise. 

Soon after the publication of the Institution Calvin left for 
Italy to visit Renee, Duchess of Ferrara, whom we already know 
as a friend of the reformers. However, by June, 1536, he is back 
in France, profiting by a momentary change in Francis' attitude 
towards the reformers. Farel now appealed to him to assist in the 
organization of the Church of Geneva, which had recently de- 
clared its political independence. Hesitating at first, Calvin 
finally goes to Geneva and lays the foundation of the repressive 
policy which he was later to carry into execution. But in 1538 the 
Genevans turn on the reformers, Farel and Calvin are forced to 
leave, and in September of that year Calvin becomes pastor of the 
small French congregation of Strassburg. Here, in comparative 
poverty, he develops the marvelous energy and stoicism of charac- 
ter which marked the remainder of his career. With his duties as 
an evangelist we are not concerned. What interests us is the form 
he now gave to his great intellectual and literary treatise. In 1539 
he expanded the original six chapters of the Institution into 
seventeen, and two years later (1541) he himself translated 
these into French. This edition, while not the final or most 
elaborate text, is yet the standard whereby Calvin's achievement 
as a thinker and a stylist is to be judged. It is now recognized 
as the edition of the Institution de la religion chretienne. 

We may pass quickly over the subsequent events of his life. 
During the Strassburg period he married and also joined in the 
famous Colloquies, which were the last attempt to reconcile the 
two forms of Christianity. In 1541 the Genevans revoked their 



158 RABELAIS AND CALVIN 

decree of banishment and Calvin returned to Geneva an absolute 
master, having previously stipulated that discipline should be 
enforced and the power of excommunication should lie in his 
hands. A new Catechism was promulgated, the strictest Ordon- 
nances were drawn up, and Geneva, in the words of John Knox, 
became " the most perfect school of Christ that was on earth 
since the days of the Apostles." As head of the Church of Geneva 
Calvin was virtually commander of the Protestant world. His 
correspondence, addressed alike to great and humble, was volu- 
minous. Certainly he spared himself neither effort nor tribu- 
lation. The one blot upon his career — the burning of Servetus 
at the stake — has at least the extenuating feature that it had the 
approval of many contemporaries, including the mild-mannered 
Melancthon, and that it was consistent with the doctrines in which 
Calvin believed. At last, in 1564, Calvin succumbed to the 
frailties of a body no longer able to bear the enormous burdens 
that were laid upon it. As his own Ordonnances provided, he was 
buried simply and without ostentation, like his " humbler associ- 
ates in death." 

As a man of the Renaissance, Calvin's point of departure is 
the reconciliation of the moral life of man with antiquity; the 
„. Bible being to Calvin what Homer and Vergil were 

naissance to others: a guarantee of truth. What is more, the 
Attitude Bible was the highest form of truth, the truth of 
the spirit; the living, undying Word of God. This the "medie- 
val " Church had excluded from men's view by a mass of doc- 
trine, commentaries and practices. Thus Calvin's method does 
not differ from that of any other humanist, from that of Rabelais, 
for example, in being a protest in the favor of reason and a 
benignant Deity against the asceticism of Rome: Celui grand 
bon piteux Dieu, lequel ne crea oncques le Caresme (Rabelais) . 
Wherein Calvin differs from his great contemporary and the 
bulk of humanists is his appraisal of man. Here his own 
physical infirmities, the corruption of the Roman clergy, his 
study of Seneca and his knowledge of the Old and New Testa- 
ments, not to mention St. Augustine, united to make him con- 
sider man a weak and miserable creature, incapable by his own 
efforts of doing anything good and durable. Pessimistic as this 
view is, Calvin is not only a moralist (in our restricted sense 



CALVIN'S THEOLOGY 159 

of the word), he is also and primarily a psychologist, and 
he analyzes human nature with an insight, a directness and a 
vividness that are astonishing. Thus the reactionary and Ro- 
manist Bossuet, finds elements in him to praise (see Les Varia- 
tions de Veglise protestante) and Pascal, author of Les Pensees, 
ideas and even passages to imitate. 

To all of this the Institution of 1541 bears ample and convinc- 
ing testimony. With unaffected simplicity Calvin says at the 
beginning: 

Toute la somme de nostre saigesse, laquelle merite d'estre appel- 
lee vraie et certaine saigesse, est quasi comprinse en deux parties, 
a scavoir la congnoissance de Dieu, et de nousmesmes. 

The sources of this knowledge lie within ourselves and in the 
Bible. There is no nation so barbarous, no people so savage, that 
His has not implanted in its heart the conviction that 

Theology there is a God. Even Plato — and Calvin does not 
hesitate to use Plato — teaches that the sovereign good of the 
soul is the similitude w T ith God. But the nexus has been broken, 
if not entirely, by Adam's fall, whence the utter depravity of 
human nature [Chs. I— II] . Therefore, salvation is to be won 
not merely through the Law or by the performance of Works 
but through Faith — Faith which moves mountains and also 
humbles the pride of man by making him realize his own worth- 
lessness. To be sure, Christ is the redeemer, but only because 
God willed him to be, and in the inscrutable will of the Almighty 
lies the fate of each of us. From this abject state we are saved, 
not through any merit we may possess, but through God's grace, 
and to be receptive for election into the Divine grace we must 
aspire after piety and lead holy lives [Chs. I— II] . Thus, by 
the rigor of his' logic, Calvin avoided the pitfall of antinomy; 
the suspicion that his doctrine is a theory of salvation rather 
than a system of ethics. As for the sacraments, they are a 
manifestation of our Faith, a confirmation and strengthening 
of our submission to the Divine order. Hence, the false ones, 
superimposed by the Roman Church, are to be shunned 
[Chs. X-XVII] . " II faut procurer leur bien," said Calvin of the 
people, " maulgre qu'ils en ayent." 

The dramatic quality of the Institution is beyond cavil. 



160 RABELAIS AND CALVIN 

In the confrontation of Man and God, stripped of all accessories, 
Calvin has stated the problem of the Renaissance in its simplest 
form. And in submerging the former in the latter he has antici- 
pated the absolutism of the seventeenth century: une lot, un roi, 
une foi. His logic was ethical, that of the seventeenth century, 
social and political. Again, the appeal to the emotions in the 
redemption by Faith has a parallel in the quickening of the soul 
through Love and Beauty of the Neo-Platonists. In fact, in 
Marguerite d'Angouleme the two ideals, theirs and his, are merged. 
Thus Calvin's references to Plato are significant. That he actu- 
ally operated the break between the Renaissance and the Reforma- 
tion is here beside the question, nor was this probably his inten- 
tion. What impresses us is his humanistic origins. 

These again manifest themselves in the French he writes and 
in his wealth of apt and telling quotation. The Institution is not 
Calvin's on ^ the ^- rs ^ theological treatise in French, it is 

Style also a monument of French style. Brunetiere, in- 

imical as he is to Calvin's ideas, cannot withhold his praise 
from the Institution as a literary composition. Ungrudgingly 
he terms it: " Le premier livre que Ton puisse appeler classique." 
This is due above all to its Latinity. Calvin carried over into 
his translation the compactness, the clearness and the precision 
of the Latin original. Moreover, the work is by its nature 
argumentative and oratorical — another approach to Classicism. 
But it does lack the suavity and grace of the French of a century 
later. Calvin is still rude, he does not temper his expressions, 
he calls his opponents harsh names; and it is not strange that 
Bossuet gave his style the epithet of triste. In short, while the 
French were to reject their "reformer," his treatise passed into 
the heritage of their literature and served to carry a knowledge 
of the French language far beyond the boundaries of France. 
Habent sua fata libelli. 



CHAPTER IV 

PLATONISTS AND NEO-PLATONISTS 

Ouk study of the Renaissance has now reached the point where 
we can consider the dominant philosophical idea of the age: an 
idea that culminates in definite form about 1540. Opposed to the 
Pseudo-Aristotelianism of the Middle Ages, this philosophy is 
known by the generic name of Platonism, since it is in the name of 
Plato that it finds its justification. Two currents, however, are 
visible: the one, dialectic or metaphysical and based more or 
less directly on the Plato of antiquity; and the other, literary 
or emotional and derived especially from the Neo-Platonism of 
Marsilio Ficino (Ch. I), whose works began to appear in France 
in 1489 and whose translation of Plato — republished there in 
1533 — calls him " the god of philosophers." 

The advocate of the " original " Plato in the university group 
was Ramus or, to give him his French name, Pierre de la Ramee. 
Pierre de His Dialectique (1555), which employs the Socratic 
la Ramee method of the Platonic Dialogues, is the earliest phil- 
osophical treatise in the French tongue. The humanists Bude 
and Dolet had both attempted to extract from the ancients the 
wisdom of which their age stood in need. In his De studio lit- 
terarum the former had advocated a form of French bon sens 
under the guidance of the Greeks, and it was for an alleged mis- 
translation of Plato that the latter had been condemned to death. 
But it remained for Ramus to establish the Socratic rationalism 
on French soil and thus to inaugurate the free discussion of 
philosophic questions. 

By birth (1515) a Picard, like Calvin, Ramus took the arts 
course at the College de Navarre in Paris. At that time Aris- 
totle's Organon was still the apostle's creed of philosophy. 
Ramus' own words are instructive: 

161 



162 PLATONISTS AND NEO-PLATONISTS 

When I came to Paris I fell into the subtleties of the sophists, 
and was taught the liberal arts by questions and disputes . . . 
never did I hear a single word on the applications of logic. . . . 
Having devoted three years and six months to the scholastic phil- 
osophy according to the rules of our academy. ... I wanted 
to learn how I should afterward apply the knowledge I had gained 
at the cost of so much labor and fatigue. At last I met with 
Galen's work on the opinions of Hippocrates and Plato. That 
. . . inspired me with an ardour still greater to read all the 
dialogues of Plato which treat of logic. 

What I loved in Plato was the method by which Socrates refutes 
false opinions, attempting above everything to elevate his hearers 
above the senses, the prejudices, and the testimony of men, in 
order to lead them to their own Natural Sense of Right and 
Liberty of Judgment. For it appeared to him insane that a phi- 
losopher should let himself be led by the opinions of the vulgar, 
who for the most part are false and deceitful, instead of apply- 
ing himself only to facts and their true causes. . . . Perhaps 
Aristotle has deceived us by his authority; if so, I need not be sur- 
prised at my having studied his books without deriving profit 
from them, since they contain none. . . . What if all that 
doctrine should be false! 1 

The conviction which Ramus here voices is of a piece with the 
famous burlesque which Rabelais [Bk. I] places in the mouth 
of Janotus de Bragmardo: 

Apres avoir ergote pro et contre, fut conclud en baralipton que 
Ton envoiroit le plus vieux et sumsant de la faculte theologale 
vers Gargantua, pour lui remonstrer l'horrible inconvenient de la 
perte d'icelles cloches (the Bells of Notre-Dame). 

In Ramus' case the reaction was so strong that in 1536, at his 
examination for the Master's degree, he enunciated the extrav- 
agant thesis that all of Aristotle's writings were wrong. 2 This 
was followed in 1543 by the Dialecticae pwrtitiones — which 
Ramus put into French in 1555 — and the Aristotelicae ani- 
madversiones. 

The excitement produced by this attack spread to every 
university in Europe. But, in spite of various reproofs and 
condemnations, Ramus managed to gain the support of the power- 
ful Cardinal de Lorraine, through whose influence he advanced 

1 Quoted from Owen, Skeptics of the French Renaissance, 1893. 

2 The title of Ramus's dissertation is Quaecumque ab Aristotele dicta essent com- 
mentitia esse. 



RAMUS 163 

to a professorship at the Royal College (College de France) , in 
1551. In this capacity he busied himself with other matters be- 
sides logic: he wrote on Cicero and Quintilian and on linguistic 
problems generally, he is the advocate of the consonantal ; and 
v of the alphabet (les lettres ramistes), and he published a Latin 
(1559), a Greek (1560) and a French grammar (1562). Thus 
he contributed not a little to the improvement of French, a move- 
ment in which Louis Meigret (the advocate of nationalism in 
grammar) , Peletier and others took part. Without being a polit- 
ical Huguenot, he later in life became a Protestant and met with 
a violent death during the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, in 1572. 

It was Ramus' endeavor to place the French mind on an objec- 
tive basis, with the ancients as a guide; to free it from the 
incubus of theology as to material and of the syllogism as to 
method. His opposition to Aristotle was due to the perversion of 
the Aristotelian method by the church, just as his espousal of 
Plato arose from the weighing of the pros and cons of which the 
Platonic Dialogues are the eternal model. In short, his impor- 
tance lies not in his conclusions, many of which are clearly false, 
but in the new start he gave to dialectics. By appealing to the 
spirit of " reason," as Socrates does in the Platonic Dialogues, 
Ramus more than anyone except Montaigne prepared the way 
for the dogmatism of Descartes, by whom, as we shall see, " rea- 
son " and " truth " are made identical and even the ancients are 
accepted only in so far as they seem rational. In this way, 
humanism locks arms with " rationalism," and all that is needed 
to make the French Classical doctrine complete is the codification 
of artistic rules on the basis of Aristotle's Poetics. This, however, 
belongs to a later chapter of our book. Meantime, let us bear 
in mind that it is Plato whom Ramus helps to enthrone in the 
minds of his time; and that the Platonic Dialogues, interpreted 
in the light of Neo-Platonic feeling or mysticism, constitute the 
background from which the middle period of the sixteenth 
century draws its inspiration. 

When in 1549 Du Bellay refers to " ces idees, que Platon 
constituoit en toutes choses, aux queles ainsi qu'a une certaine 
Neo- espece imaginative, se refere tout ce qu'on peut voir," 

Platomsm not on j y hag ^ e j n mind a we u_k nown passage of the 

Symposium (212) but he is speaking in terms which all his con- 



164 PLATONISTS AND NEO-PLATONISTS 

temporaries understood. Plato's ideas or " types," of which 
reality was thought to be only a dim copy, belonged to the fami- 
liar topics of discussion in the court circle that surrounded 
Marguerite d'Angouleme — as Heroet, the chief defender of the 
fair sex in the famous querelle, had sung : 

II me souvient luy avoir ouy dire, 
Que la beaute que nous voyons reluyre 
Es corps humains n'estoit qu'une estincelle 
De ceste-la qu'il nommait immortelle; 
Que ceste-cy, bien qu'elle fust sortie 
De la celeste et d'elle une partie 
Si toutes foys entre nous perissoit, 
Si s'augmentoit, ou s'elle decroissoit, 
Que l'aultre estoit entiere et immobile. 

Heroet's verse paraphrase in 1542 of the Androgynos myth 
(according to Ficino's translation of the Symposium) was accom- 
panied by the three cantos of the Parfaicte Amye, where he took 
the position of the Cortegiano and upheld the court lady against 
La Borderie. Thus the ideal lover would find in his lady an 
embodiment of vertii, which in turn was a reflection of the celes- 
tial type; and the human soul retaining a remembrance of the 
latter would strive for it in a spiritual love far above the love 
springing from senses. 

This central idea of the object of love in the " sovereign good " 
(le souverain bien) , intuitively remembered and therefore passion- 
ately desired, is the crux of the entire Neo-Platonic system. 
During the Renaissance it occurs in innumerable forms, notable 
among which is Spenser's rendering in immortal English : 

The noble hart that harbours vertuous thought, 
And is with childe of glorious great intent, 
Can never rest, untill it forth have brought 
Th' eternal brood of glorie excellent. 

Socially the idea falls in with the new aristocratic ideal of the 
times, with its fresh category of worldly virtues, such as virtu, 
glory, fame, magnanimity, foresight, and the like. But the 
system is also related to, and thus easily confused with, the 
amour courtois of the Middle Ages, the Petrarchism of the son- 
nets to Laura, and the Christian concept of charity found in the 



MARGUERITE d'ANGOULEME 165 

Pauline Epistles. As we noted before (Ch. I), the Renaissance 
is rife with the spirit of identification. Its impulse is constantly 
towards unity of the works of the mind. Ficino's De Triplici 
Vita (1489) is one of the earliest examples of the identifying 
process, whereas Corneille's Christian drama Polyeucte (1642) 
is one of the latest. Both works are Neo-Platonic. That is, 
Neo-Platonism is characteristic of the Renaissance in general; 
its influence is found in such divergent writers as Rabelais and 
Calvin, and it is the inspiration of much of the poetry of the 
Pleiade. Its main difference from Platonism proper is that it 
is a " system," which true Platonism never is. In a much 
confused form it afforded solace to the agonized soul of Mar- 
guerite dAngouleme. 

Marguerite was born in 1492 and died in 1549. Neither of her 
marriages was happy: the first with Charles d'Alengon and the 
second with Henri d'Albret, King of Navarre, were 
Sister of ' due to a state policy in Which Marguerite was 
Francis I guided by the interests of her brother Francis I. 
Indeed, it was upon him that she lavished the affection which was 
part of her ardent nature. 

Oh, qu'il sera le bien venu 

Celuy qui, frappant a ma porte 

Dira: Le roy est revenu 

En sa sante tres bonne et forte. . . . 

she wrote when Francis lay seriously ill. Her chief works are: 
the evangelical verses known as the Miroir de Vame pecheresse 
(1531) ; the Marguerites de la Marguerite des Princesses (1547), 
a collection of her lighter verse; the Prisons, a long composition 
in five thousand ten-syllable lines on the errors of mankind ; and 
the Heptameron (not published until 1558), an imitation of 
Boccaccio. 

Opinions as to the value of this output vary. M. Lanson, 
on the whole Marguerite's apologist, thinks that in spite of many 
admirable traits she lacks " metier " and art. Critics are agreed 
however, that the Heptameron is her best work. 

The keynote of her poetry is disquietude. Amid the welter 
of conflicting ideals Marguerite finds none to which she can 
give undivided adherence, and so she yields to the sentiment of 



166 PLATONISTS AND NEO-PLATONISTS 

the unattainable, towards which the Neo-Platonism of her neo- 
phytes directs her. Thought leads to madness, and faith alone 
can save. Thus, the Prisons mingle the allegory of the Rose, 
the gallantry of Alain Chartier, the somberness of Dante and the 
aspirations of the Protestant. Marguerite's thought and style 
are a mixture of the medieval and the modern, of the religious 
and the mundane. She delves into mathematical formulae and 
mystical symbols but with no definite purpose except to fortify 
her own ungratified longing. 

To all this the prose of the Heptameron offers a partial correc- 
tive, for the tales of which it is composed have a practical 
lesson to teach. In reality exempla, they exemplify — to repeat 
Brunetiere's jest — " les jeux de Pamour et du hasard." The 
Decameron is perhaps too obviously their model, just as the dia- 
logues which accompany the narrative are often severely Neo- 
Platonic. Yet outspoken as the tales are, what dignifies them 
is an element of real tragedy, and Marguerite affirms that they 
were drawn from actual life. 

The background is Notre-Dame de Servance in the Pyrenees, 
whither the company of " bathers " has retired after a summer at 
Cauterets. Some of the narrators are probably contemporaries 
in disguise: Oisile may be Louise of Savoy; Parlamente, who 
gives the definition of the parfait amant, Marguerite herself, and 
Hircan her second husband; whereas Dagoucin represents the 
ideal Platonist, and Saffredent and Simontault the ironical 
esprit gaulois. Thus we obtain a vivid impression of a sixteenth- 
century salon, so different from the precieux product of the 
seventeenth century. 

As for the tales themselves, one of the most typical is Les Amans 
en religion (XIX) . Here a knight and a lady being unable to 
marry decide each to enter a monastic order. Thus they give each 
other " le saint baiser de dilection " and realize their love in God. 
" Si est-ce," says Geburon, " que Dieu a plusieurs moyens de nous 
tirer a luy, dont les commencemens semblent estre maulvais, 
mais la fin est bonne." And Parlamente subjoins the general 
maxim that never did a man love God perfectly without first lov- 
ing some creature in this world. Another tale (XXV) philosoph- 
izes on a gallant adventure in the life of Francis I. Again, in 
Rolandine et le bastard (XXI) the sentiments of woman, " fondes 



DESPERIERS 167 

en Dieu," are opposed to those of man, " fondes sur le plaisir." 
Marguerite does not hesitate to mingle exempla of a lofty type 
with descriptions of every sort of infidelity, for the paradox 
of idealism and licentiousness is singularly hers. 

Fortunately, her prose is more fluent than her verse. She 
can be serious or sprightly, sentimental or ironic, as the occasion 
requires. Doubtless the model of the Decameron here helped to 
clarify her style. Unlike Boccaccio's work, the Heptameron is 
incomplete. 

To the free-thinker Bonaventure Desperiers (about 1510- 
1544), Marguerite entrusted the translation of Plato's Lysis. 
Bonaventure Desperiers was her secretary and had published, 
Desperiers as ear jy as 1537^ a Cymbalum Mundi, where in four 
dialogues he gently upbraids the " resveurs theologales." But 
Parliament understood the satiric vein of this composition and 
ordered the book to be burned. A better fate awaited the author's 
Nouvelles recreations et joyeux devis. Inspired by an easy-going 
sensualism, Desperiers here refines on Rabelais and accepts the 
philosophy to enjoy life aesthetically. The book was very popu- 
lar, going through seventeen editions before 1625. The tales, of 
which there are on'e hundred and twenty-nine, remind one 
of Sacchetti. But Desperiers depicts admirably, often with a 
few strokes; and as a romantic ironist he has few equals, even in 
French. He is thus the most " modern " story-writer of the epoch. 
He died by his own hand, apparently in order to escape 
persecution. 

It is rare in French history to find another city rivaling Paris 
as a center of culture. Such, however, was the role of Lyons 
The Ecole towards the middle of the sixteenth century. While 
de Lyon j^. wag ^ tendency of Marguerite's group to enforce 
the desire for a chosen and lofty literary art, and although it 
transmitted this desire to the poets of the next generation — the 
Pleiade — it was especially through the influence of Lyons that 
the idea was to be brought to a head. The Ecole de Lyon being 
close to Italy emphasized the value of Italian models and especi- 
ally the example of the Petrarchists in the treatment of love. 
Both of these traits are found in the Pleiade. 

In Maurice Sceve (exact dates unknown) , the chief of the Lyon- 
ese school, the Neo-Platonist and the Petrarchist combine. In 



168 PLATONISTS AND NEO-PLATONISTS 

1533 he won notoriety by his supposed discovery of the grave of 
Laura. In 1544 he published under the title Delie, objet de plus 
Maurice haute vertu, a collection of four hundred and forty- 

Sceve n j ne drains i n honor of his lady, probably Pernette 

de Guillet. The arrangement of the volume is symbolic. Delie is an 
anagram for lTdee, the prototype of the numerous Delias, Ideas, 
and Diellas that occur later on in English. The poems themselves 
are printed in groups of nine, separated by various figures and em- 
blems. Sceve follows closely the conceits of the Italian strambot- 
tists, particularly Tebaldeo and Serafino dallAquila. But like 
the earlier Italian lyrists, he also likes to fill his works with 
scientific arguments. This last trait is characteristic of his 
Microcosme, a long poem in Alexandrines, which was not printed 
until 1562. 
Sceve's Platonizing appears in such a dixain as this (306) : 

Ta beaute fut premier et doulx Tyran 
Qui m'arresta tres violentement ; 
Ta grace apres, peu a peu m'attirant, 
M'endormit tout en son enchantement : 
Dont assoupi d'un tel contentement 
N'avois de toy, ni de moy connoissance. 
Mais ta vertu, par sa haute puissance, 
M'esveilla lors du sommeil paresseux, 
Auquel Amour, par aveugle ignorance, 
M'espouvantoit de maint songe angoisseux. 

On the other hand, as Brunetiere observes, the adaptation of 
the Petrarchizing spirit to the circumstance of Sceve's own life is 
best seen in the following: 

Sur le printemps, que les aloses montent, 

Ma dame et moy sautons dans le bateau, 

Ou les pescheurs entre eux leur prise comptent, 

Et une en prend: que sentant l'air nouveau, 

Tant se debat, qu'en fin se sauve en l'eau, 

Dont ma maistresse et pleure et se tourmente. 

— Cesse, luy dis-je, il faut que je lamente 

L'heur du poisson que n'as su attraper, 

Car il est hors de prison vehemente, 

Ou de tes mains ne peux one eschapper. 

It is only natural that Du Bellay should have hailed the author 
of these " alembicated " verses as one who 

Premier emporte le prix 
Auquel tous vont aspirant. 



THE SCHOOL OF LYONS 169 

Louise Labe (1526-1566) and Pernette de Guillet (Petites et 
louables jeunesses, 1545) belong to the emancipated women of 
Louise Lyons. While they were hardly types of the aristo- 

Lab§ cratic cortegiana* onesta so much lauded in Italy, 

we need not go to the extreme of certain of their contemporaries 
who called them by a harsher name. Of Pernette we know 
little beyond the fact that Sceve was in love with her and that 
Du Bellay, in the Defense et Illustration, deprecates her lyrics. 
Louise Labe, however, won lasting fame under the name of La 
Belle Cordiere, a title due to her being the wife of Ennemond 
Perrin, the Rope-maker. 

Her work consists of three elegies, twenty-four sonnets (one 
of which is in Italian) and the prose Debat de jolie et d'amour, 
based on classical myth. In all these compositions Louise com- 
bines Italianate conceits with accents of real passion and 
poetic inspiration. The poet Olivier de Magny addressed her 
in no uncertain terms, and after passing in review the " un- 
fortunate " heroines of antiquity she herself sums up the ex- 
perience of life in the following melancholy reflection: 

Comme ce pale essaim de malheureuses Ombres, 
Du Styx ail triple couvrant les rives sombres, 
Au penser doux-amer de son ancien martyre 
S'agite tristement et doucement soupire! 
Ainsi par un beau soir, au milieu de la pleine, 
La tige que le vent bat d'une tiede haleine. 

Obviously the Ecole de Lyon had one of its most inspired 
singers in Louise Labe. 

In conclusion let us note that one member of the Pleiade, 
Pontus de Tyard, was spiritually akin to the Lyons group. Trans- 
lator of the far-famed Dialoghi d'amore of Leo Hebraeus and 
author of Les Erreurs amoureuses (1549) — a sonnet collection 
showing the influence of Sceve — he defined the " poetic 
madness " as: 

Funique escalier par lequel Tame puisse trouver le chemin qui 
la conduise a la source de son souverain bien et felicite divine. 

The last point is also brought out in the Art poetique of Thomas 
Sebillet published at Lyons in 1548. But of this more in the next 
chapter. 



BOOK II 

LITERARY THEORY AND THE RETURN 
OF THE BOURGEOIS IDEAL 

CHAPTER I 

THE DOCTRINE OF IMITATION 
THE PLEIADE 

The idea of formal perfection or virtu, mentioned above, when 
applied to literature results towards 1550 in the doctrine of 
Imitation. Incidentally, literature is recognized as a branch 
of art. In both respects Du Bellay's Defense et Illustration de 
la langue frangaise (1549) is important. It is not the origin- 
ality of Du Bellay, nor his critical depth, nor indeed his style — 
for the work gives every evidence of being hastily written — but 
mainly the timeliness and the enthusiasm of the work that place 
it among the great critical documents of Europe. What Dante's 
De Vulgari Eloquentia is for Italy, that and even more the 
Defense et Illustration is for France. 

The Greeks had no specific name for "creative literature." 
To them all art was primarily an " imitation." But they thought 
of imitation as itself experimental and creative. For while Art 
imitates Nature, it appeared to the Greeks to go a step further 
in seeking out and realizing Nature's " unfulfilled intentions " — 
to use Aristotle's phrase. That is, the Greek view was that Art 
employs the particulars furnished by Nature to arrive at the 
unity, the ideal or the universal truth that lies behind Nature. 
Thus Nature produces blindly, the artist consciously. Nature 
gropes, the artist discerns. In this way Art aims at a higher 
reality than that given by Nature, and the poet or genius is the 
person with the insight and control to set this higher reality 
before men's eyes. Fundamentally, then, the classicism of the 
ancients rests on the inner or psychological apperception of the 

170 



DU BELLAY'S THEORIES 171 

universal in a world that presents itself to the senses as con- 
stantly changing; and the balance, the repose, the completion 
(all important elements) in Greek art are the outcome of this fact. 

As far as the terms go, this was also the standpoint of the neo- 
classicism of the Renaissance. But between the world of Nature 
and themselves the men of the Renaissance saw the perfection 
of the finished products of antiquity, and this gave them a 
different point of departure. Thus their approach was through 
preexisting literature, and they began by imitating the ancient 
" forms." Critically viewed, Renaissance literature has two 
marked features: matters of form outweigh matters of content, 
and for a long time there is considerable dualism of thought 
and expression. In the lyric this attention to external form 
served to curb an exuberant and often violent emotion, and 
hence did not fail to produce very happy and beautiful results, 
especially in the sonnet, which has been aptly called le precieux 
condensateur de I' emotion lyrique. Other genres — the epic and 
the drama — were not so fortunate, for the desire of Ronsard 
in his Franciade to be Vergilian and of Jodelle in his dramas 
to be Senecan accounts largely for the sterility of these works. 
Not before the second part of the seventeenth century did French 
critics understand that the ancients were great, not because 
they were ancient, but because they were true — as Boileau 
maintained, rien n'est beau que le vrai. Thus the dualism 
of form and matter is finally overcome in the works of the 
great French Classicists, and the seventeenth century is the_ 
Classical Age in France. 

In 1549 Du Bellay ostensibly aimed his treatise at the Art 
poetique of Sebillet (see above), which despite references to 
Th u . classical models moves in the atmosphere of Marotic 
fense et experimentation and lacks the force of a definite 
Illustration purpose. Du Bellay supplies this deficiency by 
his patriotic appeal throughout to the resources of French as 
capable of the best and loftiest expression. Mistaken are they 
who would consider the French as barbarians; it all depends 
on la jantasie des hommes and the conscious effort towards 
quelque plus haut et meilleur stile such as the ancients had 
evolved. As the Romans imitated the Greeks, so the French 
must imitate both Greeks and Romans: 



172 THE DOCTRINE OF IMITATION 

se transformant en eux, les devorant; et apres les avoir bien 
digerez, les convertissant en sang et nourriture (I, 6). 

Thus it is not a question of translation but of innutrition; the 
recovery of the methods of the ancients and their absorption 
into French. The idea is not new, but Du Bellay expounds it 
with freshness and vigor. Of Aristotle he seems as yet to know 
only the name, but he quotes Horace, Quintilian and Vida 
(1527), whose adoration of Vergil the neo-classicists shared as a 
group, and he pilfers with liberal hands the ideas of Sperone 
Speroni (1534) on language. 

The two parts of the treatise are divided into twelve chap- 
ters each. The first part, or Defense proper, presents arguments 
on behalf of the language; the neglect it has suffered artisti- 
cally even from those who like Marot should have known better, 
the folly of Frenchmen trying to write literary Latin, and the un- 
tried possibilities of French itself. Here, then, Du Bellay vindi- 
cates his position and holds out promises for the future. In the 
second part or Illustration he outlines his specific reforms. He 
would not leave the two pillars of artistic speech, the poet and 
the orator, to +he guidance of Platonic ideals; definite instruc- 
tions are necessary. Talent (le naturel) alone is not sufficient, 
the artist needs also knowledge (la doctrine), and knowledge 
can be won only through work. The charge of excessive eru- 
dition, later brought against the Pleiade, here finds its expla- 
nation. Thus Du Bellay summons the poet to " finger by day 
and by night " his ancient authors and to renounce once for all 
the literary genres of the Middle Ages. Epiceries they are, 
unworthy of the temple of fame. The one exception he would 
make is the epitre — a Middle French genre — provided it is 
elegiacal like the Epistles of Ovid or sententious like those of 
Horace. His emphasis, however, is placed on the ode and the 
sonnet for the expression of emotion, and on the epigram and 
satire for the display of wit; and he hopes for the restitution 
of ancient tragedy and comedy. The eclogue, already employed 
by Marot, is to be modeled on the practice of Vergil, Theocritus 
and Sannazzaro. An entire chapter (V) is devoted to the epic. 
The models for the epic are of course the Iliad and the Aeneid, 
but the French poet is to rework such Old French works as the 
Tristan and the Lancelot over into these classical forms, or 



DU BELLAY'S THEORIES 173 

else like Jean Lemaire to exploit chronicle sources for the pur- 
pose. The real spirit of the epic, its raison d'etre in national 
feeling, utterly escapes Du Bellay (as well as most of his con- 
temporaries), and he again appeals to the poet's quest of fame: 

la gloire, seule eschelle par les degres de laquelle les mortels 
d'un pied leger montent au ciel et se font compagnons des dieux. 

In all this we see Du Bellay's scorn of the populaire igno- 
rant. The school which the manifesto inaugurates is aristocratic. 
Varied meters, classical reminiscences and metaphors, rich rime 
are to be the rule — though quantitative verse is not directly 
advised. Above all, poetic speech is to be representatively 
French, and the patriotism of the appeal is evident. Archaic 
terms, dialect words, expressions drawn from the trades and pro- 
fessions, are to be deliberately chosen, especially when justified 
by classical prototypes. The names of ancient heroes are to be 
Gallicized: thus Thesee, Achille, Horace. And the enriching 
process is to include the use of the epithet for the proper name 
(antonomasia), such as Pere foudroyant, as well as neologisms, 
like jour-apporte and aile-pied, according to ancient models. 
Syntactically, Du Bellay recommends the use of the adjective 
and the infinitive as nouns, the extension of the' definite article 
and the employment of gerundive constructions. Carried to 
excess, many of these changes were later to be attacked by 
Malherbe (see Ch. IV). For the most part, however, Du Bellay 
proceeded in accord with the genius of the language, and his 
reforms — especially at the hands of such a master as Ronsard — 
led to considerable gain in poetic expression. For the time being, 
French certainly acquired a richness and exuberance comparable 
to Elizabethan English. 

Thus the Defense et Illustration brought a new and vitalizing 
spirit into French literature. It made the man of letters a leader 
and inspirer of his people. It put literature frankly on a founda- 
tion that is ultimately aesthetic. And while the treatise is shame- 
fully weak in its estimate of the French literary past, it was 
the source of creative impulses that were long to survive the 
particular theory Du Bellay advocated. 

An insignificant protest, the Quintil-Horatian by Barthelemy 
Aneau, on behalf of the old school, was unable to mar the rapid 



174 THE DOCTRINE OF IMITATION 

triumph of Du Bellay's ideas. The fact is, the position 
of the Defense was also that of his friends and collaborators, 
Other Jacques Peletier and particularly Pierre de Ronsard. 

Poetic Arts Peletier's Art poetique is in some respects more 
mature than the Defense, but it did not appear until 1555, and by 
that time the new school was in full blast. Peletier's idea that 
French poetry must be daring and aristocratic is again typical 
of the poets of the Pleiade, who differed from the later Classicists 
mainly by their " unsociable and scornful " attitude of mind. 
Yet Ronsard's chief critical document, the Abrege de Vart 
poetique (1565), while it upholds the doctrine of inspiration 
elaborated in his earlier Ode a Michel de V Hospital, dwells on 
the factor of " conscious invention " upon which the successful 
imitation of the ancients would depend. In this advocacy of 
a rational control of the imagination he voices the growing 
tendency in favor of poetic rules. Important, too, is his choice 
of the Alexandrine as the future heroic verse of the French, a 
dictum which makes one regret that he rejected this meter for the 
Franciade. The Art poetique frangais (1605) by Vauquelin de 
la Fresnaye represents the extreme of Pleiade theorizing and is 
important — if at all — because it gives expression to the late- 
comers of the school. The era of " rules " was now at hand ; 
Vauquelin spoke of his own poem as " cot art de regies recher- 
chees." He was a lavish borrower from the Italian critic 
Minturno (1564). His idea that the poet should choose scrip- 
tural themes : 

Si les Grecs, comme vous, Chrestiens eussent escrit, 
lis eussent les hauts faits chantes de Iesus Christ, 

was derived from Minturno x and found favor with the 
Protestants, who combined the two antiquities: the classics and 
the Bible. 

The crux of Italian criticism during the sixteenth century, 
the doctrine of verisimilitude or vraisemblance as deduced from 
the study of Aristotle's Poetics, does not essentially affect the 
French until the seventeenth century. Aristotelianism is, so to 
speak, in the air. Jodelle (1552) has an allusion to the unity 
of time in his tragedy, Cleopdtre; Jean de la Tattle's Art de la 

1 This is the beginning in art of le merveilleux chr6tien. 



THE PLEIADE 175 

tragedie formulates the three unities in imitation of Castelvetro 
(1570) ; Vauquelin voices Minturno's views on the subject; 
and Scaliger, whose Poetics were published at Lyons in 1561, 
calls Aristotle imperator noster, omnium bonarum artium dictator 
perpetuus, thus inaugurating the Stagirite's hold on criticism 
for centuries. But, as we shall see, Aristotle does not become 
a factor in French literary composition until the generation of 
1630, when rationalism and taste together — le bon sens et le 
bon gout — force the French to turn to Aristotle for a practical 
theory of dramatic composition (see Bk. Ill, Ch. III). In general, 
the French sixteenth century worshiped Plato rather than Aris- 
totle; as for literary precept, the influence of Horace and of 
Vida remained paramount. 

The group of enthusiasts who put the new theories into prac- 
tice — and the Defense shows how deliberate the attempt was 
— are today known as the Pleiade. The restrictive 

T 3. PlG13.d.6 

nature of this term, however, should not lead us to 
think that the new school was limited to seven stars in the poetic 
firmament. To be sure, Ronsard, by reason of his genius the 
leader of the movement, twice celebrates seven names: in 1553, 
when he mentions Baif, Du Bellay, Jodelle, Tyard, and along 
with himself, Des Autels and La Peruse; and again in 1555, when 
Belleau and Peletier replace the last two. Only in 1556, when 
Belleau published the Odes d'Anacreon, does Ronsard welcome 
him as " the seventh of the Pleiade." His favorite term for the 
group of his associates and followers was la brigade. " Ce fut 
une belle guerre," said Pasquier, " que Ton entreprit lors contre 
l'ignorance." And to both Ronsard and Du Bellay the proselyt- 
ing character of the enterprise stood uppermost. In reality, 
many besides those mentioned cooperated to further the cause. 
Among these were the humanists Daurat and Lazare de Baif, 
who contributed towards the inception of the movement, Marc- 
Antoine de Muret, the commentator of Ronsard's works, Olivier 
de Magny, known for his skill as a Petrarchist, and so on. So 
that brigade was the general and appropriate name. On the 
other hand, Ronsard's enemies fixed derisively on the name 
Pleiade ; it was further given currency through use by the poet's 
biographer, Binet; and from Binet it has passed into literary 
history as the name of the school. 



176 THE DOCTRINE OF IMITATION 

In this larger sense, then, the poets of the Pleiade may be 
considered in three successive groups: (1) The Pleiade proper 
or the intimate associates of Ronsard, altogether the nine he 
mentions. Of these Du Bellay alone merits a place by the side 
of the master, as his equal and counterpart. Jodelle, the only 
Parisian of the group, is also the only one who has left a name 
for himself in the drama, a genre which he cultivated in imita- 
tion of Seneca and the Romans (see Bk. Ill, Ch. III). Antoine 
de Baif, an early friend of Ronsard's, devoted himself to reforms 
in prosody and meter. This is probably the reason why Du 
Bellay called him the " docte, doctieur et doctime Baif." At 
all events, Baif founded an Academy for poets and musicians 
under the aegis of Charles IX and strove to broaden the function 
of French verse by inventing a line of fifteen syllables, the 
so-called vers bdifin; but this, like his experiments in quantita- 
tive French meter, was doomed to failure. No less learned and 
certainly more philosophical was Pontus de Tyard (1521-1603), 
the author of Les Erreurs amour euses (1549), in sonnet form. 
As we have seen (Bk. I, Ch. I) , he is the link between the school 
of Sceve and the Pleiade. A Burgundian, of noble origin, he 
strengthened the stream of Platonic inspiration by rendering 
into French the Dmloghi oVamore of the Spanish Jew Leo. 
Remy Belleau, called le gentil, was the " miniaturist " of the 
school, though to his contemporaries he was mainly the honored 
translator of Anacreon (1556). Peletier we mentioned above 
and shall refer to again. Des Autels and La Peruse have only 
an incidental interest. 

(2) The so-called seconde volee, headed by the precieux and 
Italianate Desportes. They appear after the accession of Henry 
III in 1573 — the date which marks the retirement of Ronsard 
from court. As we shall see, it was against this group in partic- 
ular that Malherbe was to aim the shafts of his common-sense 
mind. 

(3) What is often regarded as an offshoot of this second 
class; namely, the Protestant school of Du Bartas and DAubigne. 
In reality, however, these gifted poets are akin to the Ronsard 
of the Discours and even of the Franciade (1572), and although 
they belong to the generation of Henry III, they stand outside 
of its control inasmuch as they represent the militant Protes- 



THE PLEIADE 177 

tantism of Henry of Navarre, later the apostate Henry IV, into 
whose reign much of their work falls. Thus by a stroke of irony 
they most resemble Ronsard in technique, inimical as they are 
to him in religion. At the same time, they had little influence 
in France, where the cause they advocated met with disaster. 

Such is a working outline of the Pleiade movement, with 
the prominent figures of which we shall deal presently. Mean- 
time, it will be well to keep in mind certain general features. 
First, as a matter of background, the cultivated but corrupt 
court, which under Catherine de Medicis (wife of Henry II 
and mother of Charles IX and Henry III) was more Italian than 
French, ever ready in the unequal battle it waged with the Protes- 
tants on the one hand and reactionary Catholics on the other to 
resort to intrigue and double-dealing. Then, there is the cult 
of ephemeral and evanescent beauty — the carpe diem or carpe 
rosam theme of the classical poets — so persistent in the lyricism 
of the age. Imitative as this idea was, it drew impetus from the 
insecurity of fortune and it encouraged poets to seek per- 
manence in artistic form. Thirdly, there is the romantic appeal 
of Nature, in her bucolic aspects, constantly renewing herself 
in a glorious rebirth. With his Vergil or Theocritus in mind, 
the poet finds a balm for his troubled spirits in effects, gentle 
and slight as they may be, that are reposeful and idyllic in 
character. And when he is a Ronsard or a Du Bellay his identi- 
fications are not only imitative but also rich in personal obser- 
vation and originality of detail. Undoubtedly, the poetic pro- 
duct is uneven. For one thing, the frequent quips and conceits 
annoy the modern reader; for another, the repetition of theme 
and manner is considerable. A genuine defect is excessive erudi- 
tion, which frequently cloys the verse and renders it unintelli- 
gible. But, on the whole, the verse is at once plastic and rich 
in color, varied in meters and genuinely musical, with a rhythm 
and stateliness — particularly in Ronsard — closer to the Greek 
than anything earlier or later in French. A realization of beauty 
was the Pleiade's preoccupation and main asset. 



CHAPTER II 

THE CHIEF POETS OF THE PLEIADE 

Pierre de Ronsard was born in 1525 at the Chateau de la 

Poissonniere near Vendome. His father was a lesser French 

noble, who had won distinction abroad and made 
Konsard 

himself useful to the household of Francis I. The 
poet would have us believe that the Ronsards descended from a 
Danubian baron domiciled in France at the time of Philip of 
Valois. It befits such traditions that Pierre was removed at the 
age of eleven from the College de Navarre in Paris and made a 
page at court. In this capacity he went twice to England and 
Scotland and was finally attached to Francis' third son, the Duke 
of Orleans. In 1540 he was sent to Germany with Lazare de 
Baif on an official mission. Returning, Ronsard contracted an 
illness which left him partly deaf and ended his diplomatic career. 
In 1543 he received the tonsure. 

He now joined Baif's son, Antoine, in the study of classical 
literature under the direction of the Hellenist Daurat. This 
apprenticeship lasted five years (1544-1549), first at Baif's 
house and then at the College de Coqueret, of which Daurat be- 
came the enthusiastic and successful principal. The legend is 
that the two students kept the candle burning throughout the 
long winter nights by alternating at the study table. Others 
who shared their zeal at Coqueret were Belleau and Jodelle; and 
in 1547 came Joachim Du Bellay, whose literary career, pre- 
viously guided by Peletier, is henceforth allied with that of 
Ronsard. : 

Daurat's teaching bore rapid fruit. It is apparent in all of 
Ronsard's early work, and, among countless other examples, is 
seen in the enthusiastic sonnet beginning: 

Je veux lire en trois jours Tlliade d'Homere. 

It is not surprising that Ronsard took to imitating the ancients 
with enthusiasm, while the care he lavished on his productions 

178 



RONSARD 179 

has become proverbial. His first odes date from 1547, but it was 
not until the year following the Defense (1549) that he could 
bring himself to publish his first collection. In the following 
we shall, consider his works in three fairly distinct periods: 

1550-1560 — or the period of the Odes, Amours, Hymnes, 
Bocage Royal and Melanges. This is the innovating epoch of 
Hellenistic and Petrarchian imitation. 

1560-1574 — the time when Ronsard is the official court 
poet and writes his Elegies, Mascarades, Bergeries, Discours and 
the Franciade. He is now the poete oratoire, in conscious pos- 
session of his own genius, with a distinct tendency towards 
nationalism. 

1574-1584 — when retired from active life Ronsard meditates 
and seeks fresh inspiration in the tranquillity of field and forest. 
The works of this autumnal period are the Sonnets pour Helene, 
the Dernier es Amours and the last part of the Bocage Royal. 

Ronsard's rise to fame is as significant as it was rapid. Follow- 
ing so soon on the Defense, the first four books of the Odes (1550) 
First boldly announce the poet's break with the school 

Period of Marot and his imitation of Horace and Pindar. 

As " father of the French ode," he claims the title of first 
lyricist of France. This vainglory is typical of the epoch 
in which he lived; and in the Ode a Michel de l' Hospital 
— one of the successful imitations of Pindar — he sings with 
astonishing virtuosity of the victory of the Muses, triumphing 
in himself: 

C'est luy dont les graces infuses 
Ont ramene par l'univers 
Le chceur des Pierides Muses, 
Faites illustres par ses vers. 

This ode is of 1552, the year that saw the publication of a 
fifth book of Odes and the Amours de P. Ronsard, a collection 
of one hundred and eighty-one sonnets. In the latter Ronsard 
sounds the gamut of mingled classical and Italian imitation in 
honor of Cassandre Salviati, a proud beauty of Blois. Both here 
and in his Odes he reveals artistic powers of the highest order. 
" Eloigne du vulgaire," as the Defense had said, he follows the 
new path of complicated Pindaric forms, plastic and picturesque 
imagery, and mythological allusions. Yet his natural sense of 



180 THE CHIEF POETS OF THE PLEIADE 

harmony and beauty is striking, as when in celebrating the 
muses he says: 

Et a qui vrayment aussi 

Les vers furent en souci, 

Les vers dont flattez nous sommes, 

Afin que leur doux chanter 

Peust doucement enchanter 

Le soin des Dieux et des hommes. 

How completely the ancients had him in their thrall appears in I 
the elegiacal Election de son sepulcre, written at the age of 
twenty-three and reminiscent of Propertius, Vergil, Ovid and 
Horace. Here romantic imagination, love of Nature and clas- | 
sical imitation are welded into a verse that reminds Sainte- I 
Beuve of a " clocher funebre": 

Antres, et vous fontaines 
De ces rochers hautaines 
Qui tombez contre-bas 
D'un glissant pas. 

All this is far removed from the triflings of the Marotiques. 
Mellin de Saint-Gelais, still in the ascendency at court, fore- 
saw his own eclipse. But if Mellin lacked genius, he did not lack 
friends and he enlisted the envious against his rival. That 
Ronsard resented the opposition he shows clearly in his gratitude 
to Marguerite de Valois for taking his part: 

N'est-ce pas toy, Vierge tres-bonne, 
. . . qui tant me fus favorable 
Quand par Tenvieux miserable 
Mon ceuvre fut Mellinisef 

Outwardly, at least, the quarrel with Mellin is over by 1553, 
and there follow Ronsard's most fruitful years. 

In 1553 the poet published forty new sonnets, an ode on his 
reconciliation with Saint-Gelais and the famous Mignonne, 
allons voir si la rose: the final expression of the carpe rosam 
theme, which Ronsard here borrows from the Fourteenth Idyll of 
Ausonius. Assured of success, he now makes concessions in be- 
half of clearness and simplicity, composing with that " ardeur et 
allegresse d'esprit " lauded by Du Bellay, and with all France at 



RONSARD 181 

his feet. The Bocage and the Melanges (both of 1554) , the one 
predominantly serious, the other frolicsome and gay, reflect an 
interest in Anacreon — after Homer and Pindar, the third Greek 
poet to influence Ronsard. But the greatest compositions of this 
time are the Hymnes and the Continuation des Amours, both of 
1555-1556. The former definitely establish Ronsard's position 
as a skillful panegyrist of his patrons, while the latter inaugurate 
his second manner. 

Dedicated to Marie Dupin — a village beauty of Bourgueil 
Second m Anjou — the new Amours are arranged on the 

Period Petrarchian plan of celebrating first the living and 

then the dead Marie. The poet apostrophizes Marie as: 

Douce, belle, gentille et bien flairante Rose, 
Que tu es a bon droit a Venus consacree 

— a notable softening in tone from that in which he sang the 
lofty and haughty Cassandre. His models now are Theocritus, 
Vergil and the neo-classic Marullus. Further, the Alexandrine 
supplants the ten-syllable as the true vers heroique. One poem 
in the collection, La Quenouille (" The Distaff ") , is a splendid 
adaptation of an idyll by Theocritus — again illustrating the 
principles of the Defense as to language: 

Aime-laine, aime-fil, aime-estaim, maisonniere, 
Longue, Pailadienne, enflee, chansonniere, 
Suy-moy, laisse Cousture, et allons a Bourgueil. 

But most characteristic of the Renaissance spirit is the celebrated 
sonnet Comme on voit sur la branche au mois de May la rose, 
with its anapaestic movement, its rich rimes, its vivid imagery 
and its complete aesthetic appeal which death itself does not mar: 

Afin que, vif et mort, ton corps ne soit que roses. 

Here the poet has seized the essence of classical antiquity — 
pagan, fatalistic, sensuous and beautiful. 

In 1559 Ronsard received the post of royal almoner, the 
success of the Amours having long since won him the unofficial 
title of " Prince des poetes frangais." Fame had confirmed his 
self-esteem. We find him reminding Henry II that kings are 
responsible to their people and that 



182 THE CHIEF POETS OF THE PLEIADE 

apres votre mort, fussiez-vous empereur, 
Vous ne serez non plus qu'un simple laboureur 

— this was still before the outbreak of the disastrous religious 
wars which were to lay France waste. With the accession of 
Charles IX his ties with the monarch are even closer, and he 
speaks out boldly in behalf of his native land. The Discours des 
Miseres de ce temps, the Continuation du Discours and the 
Remonstrance au peuple de France were produced in 1562- 
1563, at the beginning of the First Civil War. While Ronsard 
is unequivocal in his support of the Romanists, he does not 
hesitate to score their faults. Only when the Protestants resort 
to abuse does he actually take up arms against them, showing 
as the Protestant d'Aubigne admiringly states that " Les vers 
n'avoient pas oste l'usage de Pespee." Again poetry profited 
by Ronsard's directness; discarding all mythology, he makes 
his Alexandrines speak the language of the hour — forceful, 
ironic and eloquent: the first example of the poesie oratoire. 
Note the dramatic visualization of Christ in Ronsard's con- 
fession of faith: 

II arresta les vents, il marcha sur les ondes, 
Et de son corps divin, mortellement vestu, 
Les miracles sortoient, temoins de sa vertu; 

and observe how regal is the imagery. 

Meanwhile, Catherine ordered the " royal poet " to send Queen 
Elizabeth a collection of his " occasional verse " under the title 
of Elegies, Mascarades, Bergeries (1565). Ronsard's attach- 
ments had been wholly for Mary Queen of Scots, and the diamond 
which Elizabeth sent him in return could have warmed his 
heart but little. Yet the poems had his usual verve, reflecting the 
glamour of his surroundings, not a little humor and a wistful 
tenderness for the young Charles IX, of whom Ronsard was 
genuinely fond and whom he was sincerely to mourn. 

St. Bartholomew's Day (1572) drew not a line from Ronsard, 
though many others stooped to laud its horrors. If Ronsard 
was discreet, his silence left no doubt as to his opinion. In 1560 
he had published the first edition of his collected works, others 
followed at close intervals, and in 1572 there appeared four 
books of the Franciade — the longed-for French epic, the dream 



RONSARD 183 

of the Defense, heralded twenty years earlier in the Ode a 
Michel de V Hospital. Its failure was complete. Why? Ron- 
sard seemingly never knew. No more did his continuators, the 
last of whom, a certain Viennet, rewrote the work in Alexan- 
drines under the Bonapartes. Ronsard himself attributes the 
collapse to matters of detail: lack of rigid application of the 
" epic " rules, erroneous choice of ten-syllable verse, and so on. 
He explained himself in three prefaces, made revisions in 1572 
and 1578, and then desisted. The subject of the Franciade 
was bookish (the Troy legend), the technique Vergilian and the 
mythology classical: three factitious elements in a poem which 
should have had an unquestioning feeling of human destiny to 
guide it — the sine qua non of any successful epic. As we shall 
see, Chapelain in the seventeenth century, and Voltaire in the 
eighteenth, fared no better in their attempts at epic verse, 
whereas d'Aubigne in the sixteenth and Victor Hugo in the 
nineteenth came closest to the coveted goal. On the other hand, 
the real epics of the Renaissance are Tasso's Gerusalemme 
liber ata and Milton's Paradise Lost. 

The last period of Ronsard's life was passed mostly in the 
country, either at Montoire and Croix Val or in his priory at 
Third Saint-Cosme near Tours. He was now quite gray, 

Period often ill, and bereft of his friends: Du Bellay, Jo- 

delle and finally Belleau (1557). Yet his genius was to shine 
forth on two further occasions. The one was the publication of 
.his last sonnets, the Sonnets pour Helene; .and the other, the com- 
pletion of the Bocage royal, included in a celebrated folio edition 
of his works (1584). With Helene de Surgeres the poet held a 
position of equality ; as a consequence the sonnets to her are more 
intimate and truer to reality than those he dedicated to Cas- 
sandre or Marie. Here Ronsard does not fail to give us 
" lesser details ": 

Seule, sans compagnie, dans une grande salle 
Tu logeais l'autre jour, pleine de majeste, 

and the well-known Quand vous serez bien vielle, au soir, a la 
chandelle illustrates this trait without sacrificing the earlier, 
more literary features. Characteristic of this period is also 
an ode, Magie ou delivrance oVamour, where the verse itself is 



184 THE CHIEF POETS OF THE PLEIADE 

suggestive, as M. Jusserand points out, of evanescence and 
liberation: 

Vents qui soufflez par cette plaine, 

Et vous, Seine, qui promenez 

Vos flots par ces champs, emmenez 

En TOcean noyer ma peine. 

Lastly, in one poem at least of the Bocage royal the poet's sym- 
pathy with Nature reaches a climax in an expression of uni- 
versal melancholy, and the forest of Gatine falling before the 
woodman's ax: 

Tu deviendras campagne et en lieu de tes bois, 
Dont Fombrage incertain lentement se remue, 

becomes the symbol of universal change: 

La matiere demeure et la forme se change. 

Thus when Ronsard died in December, 1585 — regretted 
by the civilized world — he had rounded out his life and his 
experience. A lesser star, that of Desportes, was in the ascend- 
ency, and a new age was preparing. But Ronsard remains the 
poet by preference of the sixteenth century. Both in variety 
of genius and in wealth of performance he transcends the others. 
" C'est le premier poete de ce siecle," said Du Verdier in the 
very year of Ronsard's death. 

The princely Ronsard has a counterpart in the gentle Du 
Bellay. Contemporaries likened him to Ovid; another com- 
D B 11 parison would be to Lamartine. In any case, Du 

Bellay was by nature a romantic. More modern in 
this respect than Ronsard, he was at odds with the world, fell 
short of the program he had planned, and died prematurely and 
broken in spirit in 1560. Not to be compared to his fellow crafts- 
man for poetic sweep and power of execution, he had a finer per- 
ception and a more delicate, less sensuous temperament. Hence 
his Petrarchizing seems more natural and his Neo-Platonism is 
more effective. Sainte-Beuve applies to him the lines written 
by Du Bellay himself to a friend: 

L 'amour se nourrit de pleurs, 
Et les abeilles de fleurs; 
Les pres aiment la rosee, 
Phoebus aime les neuf soeurs, 
Et nous aimons les doulceurs 
Dont ta muse est arousee. 



DU BELLAY 185 

Joachim Du Bellay was born about 1525 at Lyre, upon the 
left bank of the Loire, not far from Angers. His father Jean 
Du Bellay was a Sieur de Gannor, governor of Brest, and be- 
longed to a family made illustrious by Cardinal Du Bellay and 
M. de Langey, a notable general. Losing his parents during boy- 
hood, Joachim fell to the care of an elder brother, who neglected 
his education and his health. Thus necessity rather than choice 
led him to seek in French the glory that was denied him in the 
field of the classics. This idea lies back of the Defense. 

When Du Bellay joined Ronsard's circle in Paris his devotion 
to poetry was already established. He says pointedly in L'Olive, 
his first sheaf of poems (1549) : " Ce fut pourquoi a la persuasion 
de Jacques Peletier, je choisi le sonnet et l'ode." Two thirds of 
the sonnets of this collection (2nd ed. 1550) are from the Italian, 
while the odes follow the model of Horace. But already Du 
Bellay shows great metrical skill and his particular spiritualizing 
trend, for his lady's name, Olive, is symbolic of Pallas Athena. 
The climax of this Platonizing mood is reached in Sonnet 113 
(Si notre vie est moins qu'une journee) , the theme of which can 
be traced back to Petrarch through Daniello, and forward into 
Lamartine's Isolement. Yet the inconstancy of his enthusiasm 
appears in his translating the Fourth Book of the Aeneid (1552) 
— he who had inveighed against translators in the Defense. A 
year later his Recueil de poesie goes so far as to ridicule in 
sprightly verse the excesses of the Petrarchian style. The fact 
is that Du Bellay's sensitiveness easily turned upon itself. This 
is seen in the ironic close he gave to many of his sonnets and, 
above all, in the capital Poete cour-tisan (not published until 
1559) , where he mockingly advises those whom a desire for suc- 
cess has lured into the servilities of the court circle. Possibly 
his " court poet " was Mellin de Saint-Gelais, though the satire 
also reflects Du Bellay's personal experience. 

In 1553 his relative, the Cardinal, invited him to come to 
Rome. This trip marks the turning-point in Du Bellay's life 
and inspired his distinctive verse: the Antiquites de Rome, the 
Regrets and the Jeux rustiques — all published after his return 
to France in 1558. With what high expectation Du Bellay entered 
the Eternal City can be imagined. The enthusiastic Descriptio 
Romae, in Latin heroics, depicts the renascent city recovering 



186 THE CHIEF POETS OF THE PLEIADE 

the treasures of antique sculpture and architecture. As a matter 
of fact, Du Bellay promised himself the impossible: 

Je me feray sgavant en la philosophie, 
En la mathematique et medicine aussy: 
Je me feray legiste, et d'un plus hault soucy 
Apprendray les secrets de la theologie: 
Du lut et du pinceau j'esbatteray ma vie, 
De l'escrime et du bal. Je discouray ainsy 
Et me vantois en moy d'apprendre tout cecy 
Quand je changeay la France au sejour d'ltalie. 

The Antiquites de Rome, in sonnet-form, are the record of his 
early impressions. For pathos of vanished grandeur and for 
sentiment of ruins they have seldom been surpassed, certainly not 
in French. On the Horatian theme of Suis et ipsa Roma viribus 
ruit Du Bellay builds a vision of Rome's ancient splendor: 

Rome seule pouvoit Rome ressembler, 

Rome seule pouvoit Rome faire trembler: 

Ainsi n'avoit permis Pordonnance fatale 

Qu'autre pouvoir humain, tant fust audacieux, 

Se vantast d'egaler celle qui fit egale 

Sa puissance a la terre et son courage aux cieux. 

But only the memory of that power now remains, and in an 
admirable sonnet the poet muses on what the shades of the old 
Romans — les ombres poudreuses — would say if they could 
behold their city under the rule of the popes, the ruined city which 

Chascun va pillant: comme on voit le glaneur 
Cheminant pas a pas recueillir les reliques 
De ce qui va tombant apres le moissonneur. 

Du Bellay's post in the Cardinal's household was that of a 
head steward. In this capacity he had to attend to the hundreds 
of details which his Eminence imposed, and he accompanied 
his master to the consistory. It was an interesting but on the 
whole a wearisome life, especially for one of Du Bellay's ideals. 
For a while the glamour of the official life held him. But soon 
his heart sickens at the corruption in high places ; an unfortunate 
passion for the Faustina of his Poemata and a longing for his 
native heath hasten the break, and in 1557 he sets out for home. 
The stages of the return trip (via Venice, the Grisons and Switz- 



MINOR POETS 187 

erland) are recorded as a part of the Regrets, the most intimate 
of the poet's sonnets and those in which his mingled sentiment 
apid satire are best expressed. Every Frenchman knows the 
sonnet beginning: 

France, mere des arts, des armes et des lois; 

though few know that it is modeled on a Latin hymn by Petrarch. 
Unsurpassed, however, in all respects is the Sonnet du petit Lire 
with its ringing conclusion: 

Plus me plaist sejour qu'ont basti mes ayeulx 



Plus mon Loyre gaulois que le Tybre latin, 
Plus mon petit Lyre que le mont Palatin, 
Et plus que Tair marin la doulceur Angevine. 

This same douceur is characteristic of the poem which more 
than all others is associated with Du Bellay's memory: the fa- 
mous Vanneur de Ble imitated from the Neo-Latin poet Navagero. 
Here the silvery grace of Du Bellay's fancy comes into full play, 
and his love of the fields, typical of his later Jeux rustiques, 
finds an echo in the very texture of his versification. But Du 
Bellay did not long survive his return to Anjou. Weakened in 
health, grown entirely deaf, he also found himself deserted by the 
relatives from whom he had sought support. When he died he 
was barely thirty-seven. A complete edition of his works did not 
appear until after his death. 

" Depuis . . . Ronsard et Du Bellay," said Montaigne, " je 
ne vois si petit apprenti qui n'enfle les mots et qui ne range les 
Lesser cadences a peu pres comme eux." This is unfortu- 

Stars nately true of almost all of their associates, not to 

mention the large band of purely servile imitators. Antoine de 
Baif (1532-1589) wrote various Amours, the second collection 
of which, addressed to the lady Francine, consecrates the use of 
the Alexandrine in the sonnet (1555). Baif tried to make up in 
learning what he lacked in genius; but his attempts at spelling- 
reform, vers bdifins (Ch. I) and quantitative blank verse, 
while laudable in themselves, met only with a passing success. 
Remy Belleau (1526-1577) had at least more talent, which he 
expended on his version of Anacreon and especially in adapting 



188 THE CHIEF POETS OF THE PLEIADE 

the medieval " lapidary " to Renaissance taste in the Nouveaux 
echanges des pierces precieuses. When at his best, he paints 
with a delicate brush, in miniature style. One of his songs, Avril, 
reveals the same delicate feeling for Nature and owing to its 
charm is still a favorite anthology piece. To mention a poet who 
stood outside the immediate circle of the Pleiade, Olivier de 
Magny (1529-1561) has a certain freshness of expression. He 
was in love with Louise Labe and won honor at the court of 
Henry II with his Soupirs, a collection of Italianate sonnets in 
precieux style; but although he also wrote odes imitating 
Anacreon his personal contribution is nowhere signficant. 

With the rise of the seconde volee, represented by Desportes 
and Bertaut, the Hellenizing period in poetry is practically at 
an end. The well-known lines of Boileau on Ronsard, 

Ce poete orgueilleux, trebuche de si haut, 
Rendit plus retenus Desportes et Bertaut, 

however, express only a half-truth. For if the generation of 
1573 shows restraint with respect to Greek and Latin, its imi- 
tations of contemporary Italian can hardly be called retenues. 

Philippe Desportes (1545-1606), remembered chiefly because 
of the criticism by Malherbe — the famous Commentaire sur 
Desportes (see below) — " made flattery into a fine 
and art." Taken early to Italy, he became secretary to 

Bertaut Nicolas de Neufville, minister of state, and in 1572, 

the Duke of Anjou — the future Henry III — gave him " dix 
mille ecus " to publish a sumptuous volume containing his 
Premieres Poesies. On Henry's accession to the throne Des- 
portes became court poet. As such, he lived the life of a grand 
seigneur, celebrating in verse the supposed virtues of the royal 
favorites and receiving from his master benefices that annually 
amounted to some 30,000 livres. Says Sainte-Beuve: "Plus 
on regarde dans la vie de Desportes, plus on y trouve d'abbayes." 
Yet sycophant that he was, he remained a grand seigneur, and 
his munificence and liberality charmed friends and foes alike. 

In addition to elegance, Desportes' verse has a certain formal 
compactness wedded to an abiding gift of esprit. He is the 
Marot of the Pleiade school, and like Marot or the English 
poet Herrick he wrote both worldly and devotional poems. 



MINOR POETS 189 

How polished his verse could be can be seen from the sonnet 
later translated into English by Daniel: 

Sommeil, paisible fils de la nuit solitaire. 

But his Chansons, set to music, were even more popular in 
his day; and one in particular, imitated from Ariosto, is the 
essence of graceful expression: 

Nuit! jalouse Nuit I contre moi conjuree, 
Qui renflamme le ciel de nouvelle clarte, 
T'ai-je done aujourd'hui tant de fois desiree 
Pour estre si contraire a ma felicite? 

For the most part, however, Desportes is merely facile and 
mundane — a slave to the worst type of Italianism. Here 
his models were Tasso, Tebaldeo, Angelo di Costanzo; in imi- 
tation of whom he abounds in hyperbole, exaggerated conceits 
and antitheses. His Poesies chretiennes contain the strange 
Italian device of uttering in the same breath the name of Christ 
and that of the poet's " belle meurtriere." 

Less talented than Desportes, Jean Bertaut — later bishop 
of Seez — is at least free from the latter's exaggerations. Indeed, 
Bertaut, whose productive period (1580-1602) falls within the 
reign of Henry IV, is a transitional poet, having some of the 
impersonality we later find in Malherbe. Certain of his lines 
have the sonorous melancholy of Lamartine: 

Et vous, humbles costeaux ou les pampres foisonnent 
Et vous, ombreux vallons, de sources arroses, 

Chantez-la sur les vents qui vous servent de voix. 

But such passages are rare; only occasionally and then in his 
religious verse (such as paraphrases from the Psalms, funeral 
panegyrics, and the like) does Bertaut attain this lofty tone; 
more often he is prosaic and stilted. Less of a plagiarist than 
/ Desportes, he nevertheless imitates the Italian Tansillo and — 
in his most inspired moments — Tasso. Ronsard lauded his 
sagesse. His works, however, were not published until 1601-1602. 
The French, says M. Lanson, are often severe to minorities 
and to the awkward genius who dresses out of fashion. This 



190 THE CHIEF POETS OF THE PLEIADE 

remark does not apply to Du Bartas, whose imperfections did 
Du Bartas no ^ P reven ^ nmi fr° m winning a contemporary suc- 
and # cess second only to that of Ronsard; but it fits 

gne exactly that far more original genius DAubigne, 
whose poetic works, appearing between 1616 and 1630, were 
hardly noticed. 

The Huguenot poet Guillaume de Salluste, Seigneur du Bartas 
(1544-1590), was a Gascon by birth and by temperament. He 
was faithful to Henry of Navarre, who sent him on various 
missions, including one to England and Scotland. The last poem 
Du Bartas wrote was a celebration of the victory of Ivry. En- 
dowed with a picturesque imagination, he carried the principles of 
Ronsard to the extreme. Enjambement, inversion, neologisms, 
abound in his work. While his poetry has sweep and a certain 
grandeur, it startles the reader with such grotesque effects as: 

Mais le cceur de Judith, qui sans cesse ba-bat 
or 

Le ciel d'un fer rouille sa face voilera. 

But this love of the baroque would shock a foreigner less than a 
Frenchman; and it is significant that Goethe admired Du Bartas 
sufficiently to translate him. 

Du Bartas began his poetic career by answering Du Bellay's 
call for an epic. The subject,, given him by Jeanne dAlbret, 
Queen of Navarre, was the liberation of Jerusalem from Holo- 
fernes by Judith. This Judith, written in 1565 but not published 
until 1573, gains its interest mainly from the fact that Du 
Bartas treats the Biblical subject according to the Vergilian 
technique then in vogue. But at least Du Bartas had vindicated 
poetry by the choice of a lofty theme and prepared the way for 
the publication of La Semaine, a work on the Creation, in 1578. 
A comparison of this work with the original Genesis shows at 
once that he had overestimated his powers of thought and expres- 
sion. The subject was epic — certainly for a Protestant — the 
plot was well planned, but again Du Bartas had neither the depth 
nor the restraint to achieve more than a contemporary success. 
Yet La Semaine received twenty editions in five years ; and in 1584 
the poet began to publish La Seconde Semaine, which though 
never completed was to reach to the Last Judgment. The expla- 



DU BARTAS AND D'AUBIGNE 191 

nation is that not only Protestants but the entire world honored 
the seriousness of the attempt. Here was a Christian poet with 
vigor and imagination, and so Du Bartas was translated into 
Latin, Italian, Spanish, German and English (by Silvester in 
1605-1606). Notre Milton manque M. Morillot calls him, a 
verdict that sums up aptly Du Bartas' noble failure. In France 
the magnificent folio edition of his works in 1611 properly marks 
Du Bartas' tomb (Sainte-Beuve) ; for neither Malherbe nor 
Boileau mentions his name. 

Theodore-Agrippa d'Aubigne (1550-1630) was by nature ardent, 
intolerant and pleasure-loving — quite a contrast to Du Bartas. 
Reared in a world of strife by the most Protestant of fathers, 
he studied in Paris and Geneva, and took up arms in the Protes- 
tant cause at eighteen (1568). But warfare was not his profes- 
sion; in the intervals of peace he enjoyed life and cultivated the 
arts with the same whole-hearted passion that characterized the 
Huguenot. He boasts in his Vie, a ses enfants that at " seven and 
a half," he translated Plato's Crito. He was proficient in engi- 
neering and in magic. And between the two Civil Wars he shone 
at court sufficiently to compose the Hecatomb e a Diane, one 
hundred Ronsardian sonnets addressed to Cassandre Salviati's 
niece, and he pleased Charles IX with a lyric tragedy called 
Circe. Ronsard himself could have done no better. It was 
D'Aubigne who helped the later Henry IV to escape from the 
Louvre during the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. Though the 
poet never forgave Henry his apostacy he continued to serve 
him as governor of Maillezais and vice-admiral of Guyenne and 
Brittany. In 1620 — under Louis XIII — he retired to Geneva, 
where he died. The great sorrow of his life was the betrayal 
of the Protestant cause at La Rochelle by his son Constant, 
whose daughter — strange to say — was no less a person than 
Madame de Maintenon. 

Thus D'Aubigne sums up in his person the Renaissance and 
the Reformation. He mingles the enthusiasm — la fougue — of 
both movements in a last expression. With the Renaissance 
exuberance of life he combines the intensity of the Calvinistic 
point of view. Hence his really great work, the epico-lyric 
Tragiques, resembles an alloy of gold and iron, beaten out on an 
anvil. Divided into seven cantos, half historical and half satir- 



192 THE CHIEF POETS OF THE PLEIADE 

ical, the work is the Jeremiad of the religious wars. DAubigne 
is neither a Dante nor a Milton. His work, as a whole, is hastily- 
written and poorly revised; above all, it is not firmly conceived 
from start to finish, the supernatural in it — le merveilleux 
chretien — lacks clearness, and the style, while forceful, is devoid 
of harmony and cadence. In short, the poem is a torso rather 
than a finished work of art. Nevertheless, the Tragiques contain 
some of the finest and most inspired passages of which French 
poetry can boast — passages that are comparable to the best we 
find in the Chdtiments of Victor Hugo. For concision, let us note 
the following: 

Ici le sang n'est feint, le meurtre n'y defaut, 
La mort joue elle-mesme en ce triste eschafaud; 

for irony and satire, the whole section on Agrippa d'Aubigne a 
la Cour, where the poet outstrips Du Bellay in excoriating the 
king's favorites; for love of country, the section beginning: 

France desolee, 6 terre sanguinaire! 

and lastly, for dramatic visualization, the description of Cain: 

II estoit seul partout, hormis sa conscience, 

Et fut marque au front, afin qu'en s'enfuyant 

Aucun n'osast tuer ses maux en le tuant. 

As was said, DAubigne's Tragiques did not appear in print 
until 1616. Between this date and 1630 his prose works were 
published. Chief among these are the Histoire universelle, in 
which he patiently strives to give a nonpartisan view of human 
history, and the amusing, almost picaresque, Aventures du Baron 
de Foeneste. This latter is an account, interspersed with delight- 
ful tales, of a parasitic nobleman, a sort of courtly Panurge 
living on the toil of others; whereas the Confession catholique 
du Sieur de Sancy is a mordant satire of a recalcitrant nobleman. 
In all these works DAubigne shows his dominant traits: im- 
agination, directness and color — coupled with unrestraint, lack 
of taste and carelessness. The best in DAubigne is " personal " ; 
this we should not forget in considering that his works were 
published at the beginning of the most impersonal age of French 
literature, the age of les idees generates. 



CHAPTER III 
AMYOT, MONTAIGNE AND BRANTOME. 

The three writers treated in this chapter, the first a trans- 
lator, the second an essayist and the third a compiler of memoirs, 
are embraced under what the French call by the generic name 
of moralistes. That is, they were all three interested in the 
problem of conduct, not that like Calvin they necessarily 
wished to reform it, but rather that they sought to extract from 
human affairs whatever practical philosophy they could. Ronsard 
and his school had revived, as we saw, the cult of ancient 
forms. In the manners and customs of the ancients they took 
little stock. What if antiquity had no practical lesson to teach? 
if the pagan world so long misunderstood had no vital force to 
transmit? It was such an estimate of the life and ideas of the 
ancients apprehended in their everyday aspect that Amyot and 
especially Montaigne were to give. Last in the procession comes 
Brantome, disillusioned as to general principles, but vividly curi- 
ous as to the doings of his contemporaries. But whatever the 
translator revives, or the essayist dissects, or the writer of 
memoirs records — the portrayal is striking, an image of mankind 
as in a mirror: graphic, detailed and very human. 

Jacques Amyot's life practically covers the century (1513- 
1593) . Born of plain folk in the little town of Melun, he rose by 

Amyot dint of toil to be Master of Arts at nineteen and tutor 

to the nephews of Abbe Colin, translator of the 
Cortegiano. Won by his personality, Marguerite d'Angouleme 
appointed him to a professorship at Bourges. Here he remained 
until in 1547 Francis I made him abbot of Bellozane, the last 
foundation to which Francis chose the appointee. Some think 
Amyot owed this favor to his translation of the romance Theagene 
et Chariclee. Thanks to the studies of M. Sturel, however, we 
now know that as early as 1542 Amyot received the commission 
" par le commandement du grand roy Francois " to translate the 

193 



194 AMYOT, MONTAIGNE AND BRANTOME 

Parallel Lives of Plutarch. This translation, achieved nearly 
seventeen years later, when the magnificent in-folio containing 
the Vies appeared in Paris, is the monument of Amyot's life. To 
accomplish it he spent four years in Italy, searching through 
libraries and collating manuscripts, and incidentally discovering 
the works of Diodorus the Sicilian. In Rome he won the friend- 
ship of the Cardinal du Tournon, through whose influence he 
returned to France as the tutor of the Dukes of Orleans and of 
Anjou, the future Charles IX and Henry III. In 1559 he became 
" grand aumonier de France," and in 1570 bishop of Auxerre. 
His last years were darkened by tragedy. In December, 1588, 
the Due de Guise was murdered at Blois. Amyot, who unfortu- 
nately was in Blois at the time, was indirectly accused of having 
been an accomplice in the crime. He wrote an Apologie and even 
obtained an absolution from the papal legate in 1590. But he 
died, more or less under the cloud of the tragic event, in February 
1593. His charge of aumonier had been taken from him two 
years earlier. 

Passing over Amyot's lesser works, which include a rendering 
of the Daphnis and Chloe story, we may center upon his Vies 
des hommes illustres de Plutarque and the (Euvres morales of the 
same author (published in 1572) as the works upon which his fame 
rests. We all know the importance of North's translation of 
Plutarch for the works of Shakespeare. The Parallel Lives are 
in themselves inspiring reading, and Amyot's Vies is one of the 
masterpieces of French prose. " Nous autres ignorants," says 
Montaigne, " etions perdus si ce livre ne nous eut releves du 
bourbier: sa merci, nous osons a cette heure et parler et ecrire 
: . . e'est notre breviaire." And the book retained this 
function down through the seventeenth century, when Corneille 
took from it subjects for his dramas and Racine read it to 
Louis XIV, up to the very threshold of the Revolution, when 
it stirred Rousseau and still fascinated Madame Roland. In 
this tremendous vogue the (Euvres morales are a close second 
to the Vies. 

First of all, Amyot was fortunate in choosing such an author. 
As a writer Plutarch suited the social genius of the French pre- 
cisely. Through him they felt at one with the world of antiquity. 
If the ancients loved glory, here were examples of glory; if they 



MONTAIGNE 195 

were heroic, here were the illustrations of this heroism, saisi sur 
l e yif _ the expression occurs in Amyot. In other words, Plutarch 
enabled the French to see how the ancients lived, how they 
worked, thought, spoke, conducted themselves at home and 
abroad, with all their virtues, vices, foibles and idiosyncracies 
laid bare. 

In the second place, Amyot did not attempt in any sense a 
literal translation. On the contrary, keenly alive to Du Bellay's 
warning that observing " la loy de traduyre, qui est n'espacier 
point hors des limites de Taucteur, vostre diction sera contrainte, 
froide, et de mauvaise grace," he deliberately made Plutarch 
over into a French author by giving him a form which, while 
true to the original in idea, never slavishly followed the wording 
of the original Greek. And in so doing he made his Plutarch 
the best collection of the words and idioms of sixteenth-century 
speech. Coming after Rabelais and Calvin, he is thus the third 
to reveal the capacities of French literary prose. Not that he 
has not faults both of style and of interpretation. His sentences 
are often involved and loose in structure, just as he mistakenly 
calls the vestals religieicses and the favorites of Alexander des 
gentilshommes de chambre. But this is all a part of his larger 
purpose; namely, to give his author contemporaneousness. Thus 
it is that he made Plutarch the most accessible of the ancients 
to his and to future generations: to mention Plutarch to a 
Frenchman is to name Amyot. 

If Amyot was the mentor, Etienne de la Boetie (1530-63) 
was the friend of the great Frenchman whom we are now to con- 
„ . sider. La Boetie is the author of the Discours de la 

Servitude volontaire or Contr'un (not published until 
1574) , a violent but youthful invective against tyranny, but he 
is probably remembered with better reason for his relationship 
with Montaigne — a relationship which the latter has immortal- 
ized in the words: " Parce que c'etait lui, parce que c'etait moi." 
Michel Ey quern, Seigneur de Montaigne, was born near Ber- 
gerac at Perigord in 1533. His father, whom Montaigne always 
remembered with affectionate reverence, was an original figure: 
a public-spirited citizen of Bordeaux, who after leading for a 
while the life of an Italian campaigner, was pleased to forget 
that the family fortune rested on the sale of wine and of fish. 



196 AMYOT, MONTAIGNE AND BRANTOME 

His mother came from a family of Portuguese Jews named 
Louppes or Lopez — a fact that may account for the intellectual 
curiosity which our author valued so highly in himself. The 
Ey querns were a sturdy lot; une race fameuse en prud'hommie. 
Of Pierre's eleven children, eight grew up, the oldest being Michel. 

The father gave his eldest the full benefit of his originality. 
Michel's first two years were spent in a peasant village; thus 
was he to absorb a sympathy for the poor and lowly ; the father's 
idea, says the poet, " succeeded not ill." The boy's next tutor 
was a German physician who spoke Latin to him. With Greek, 
attempted next, the experiment was not very successful. As 
an instance of parental care, Montaigne records that he was 
waked in the morning to the sound of music. From the age of six 
to thirteen he was at the College de Guyenne, where he took 
leading parts in Latin tragedies by Muret and Buchanan. In the 
essay called De I'institution des enfants Montaigne regrets that 
this education did not profit him more. 

Little is known of Montaigne's life from 1547 to 1554 — the 
supposition is that he studied law at Toulouse. In the latter 
year he succeeds his father as a member of the Cour des aides at 
Perigueux, and, upon its suppression (1557), he replaces him in 
the Parliament of Bordeaux. Here he meets and makes friends 
with La Boetie, whose untimely death in 1563 he mourns with all 
the poignancy of youth. But nature did not fit him for the magis- 
tracy; he is often absent from his post: at Paris or at Rouen, 
where in 1562 he sees in the suite of Charles IX the Brazilian 
natives whom he mentions in Des cannibales. Three years later 
he married Franchise de la Chassaigne, who was eleven years his 
junior, and whom he esteemed but did not love. With his father's 
death (1568) Montaigne lost the one person after La Boetie for 
whom he seriously cared. A year later he published a translation 
of the Theologia naturalis of Raymond de Sebond, a piece of work 
undertaken at his father's request and the publication of which 
marks his appearance as a writer. 

Choosing, as Professor Dowden has said, " rather to fail in 
justice than humanity," Montaigne now retires from his post and 
devotes himself to private affairs and to study. For this the 
Chateau de Montaigne was beautifully adapted. In its tower 
Montaigne arranged a study with long galleries leading from it 



MONTAIGNE 197 

(like Aristotle he was a peripatetic), and collected a rich library. 
Of his one thousand books eighty have survived to this day, 
and on the margin thereof we can still read his observations on 
his favorite authors. These commentaries jotted down on the 
inspiration of the moment are the groundwork of his famous 
Essais, of which the first two books appeared in 1580. 

Meantime, however, Montaigne discovered that along with many 
admirable traits his father had left him a tendency toward gravel. 
In order to correct this malady he travels in foreign lands. 
For the advice of physicians — la mer trouble et vaste des erreurs 
medicinales — he has little use. But he trusts nature, and after 
a journey of a year and a half through Switzerland, Germany 
and Italy he settles in Rome. The Journal de voyage, first pub- 
lished in 1774, is a record of his observations as a traveler. 
These are mainly about human nature, as we should expect of one 
who says " I have an apish and imitating character " and " I like 
a Pole as well as a Frenchman." He is, however, impressed with 
the vanished grandeur of Rome; and the gift of Roman citizen- 
ship conferred upon him greatly flatters his pride. 

It is during a sojourn at the Baths of Lucca that Montaigne 
receives news of his election as mayor of Bordeaux. Reluctantly 
he wends his way home (1581) to acquit himself of a duty but 
not a pleasure. He tells his constituents that he will take the 
affairs of the city in hand — non pas au poumon et au foie, de 
m'en charger et non de les incorporer. Montaigne's casualness, 
the unprofessional attitude of the Renaissance gentleman, is 
nowhere more evident than in this remark. In 1583 his fellow- 
citizens reelect him; yet when the city is swept by the plague he 
takes excellent care to avoid the danger-zone and, at the expira- 
tion of his term of office in July, 1585, he gladly lays down the 
reins of government. At the same time, his contemporaries never 
whispered a reproach, and Montaigne assures us that he shunned 
" no action which duty rightly demanded of him." 

His final retirement into private seclusion now took place. 
Such worldly honors as a knighthood in the Order of St. Michael 
and membership in the King's Chamber were long since his. 
Henceforth he lived for his thoughts, shared often with his 
newly won friend Charron, whose Sagesse is a codification of 
Montaigne's ideas. The Essais had appeared in new editions 



198 AMYOT, MONTAIGNE AND BRANTOME 

(with additions) in 1582 and 1587. In 1588 Montaigne pub- 
lished a so-called " fifth edition," which contained a third book, 
with u six cents additions aux deux premiers" Having gone to 
Paris to supervise the publication, he there met Marie de 
Gournay, whose idealistic devotion to him won for her the title 
of sa fille d'alliance. She it was who directed the editing of 
the posthumous edition of Montaigne's works in 1595. He was 
now growing old, mais a reculons. The library of Bordeaux 
still has his copy of the 1588 edition into which he wrote his 
last corrections and additions. It shows how he constantly 
sought to improve his text, cancelling repetitions, modernizing 
or shortening sentences, and so on. Montaigne died on Sep- 
tember 13, 1595 — of quinsy or grippe — surrounded by his 
family and friends, and having received the last rites of the 
church according to his own wish. 

It would be a mistake to look in Montaigne's writings for any 
consistent philosophy. His point of view is more nearly prag- 
The matic than anything else, provided always we remem- 

" Essais " ^ er ^^ Montaigne the epicurean, the lover of peace 
and tranquillity, furnishes the background. This granted, the 
Essais give the general impression of a kaleidoscope: the ground 
seems constantly to shift, the thesis' is never maintained, at least 
not for long. The letter- writer Balzac said: " Montaigne com- 
mence et finit pour ainsi dire a chaque phrase." And Etienne 
Pasquier thought that more than one of the essays might be called 
a coq-a-l'ane. The position to which Montaigne constantly re- 
turns is found in the words: " Certes, c'est un sujet merveilleuse- 
ment vain, divers et ondoyant, que l'homme: il est malaise d'y 
fonder jugement constant et uniforme." x Consequently: "Je 
n'ai rien a dire de moi entierement, simplement et solidement, 
sans confusion et sans melange, ni en un mot. Distingue- est le 
plus universel membre de ma logique." 

To understand Montaigne, then, there is but one correct 
method; namely, to follow the evolution of his thought, to gather 
as it were the mosaic of his differentiations, piece by piece, and 
see what conclusion can be drawn from the completed picture. 

The bulk of Book I and the beginning of Book II, composed 
before 1573, show the influence of Seneca and Plutarch. The 

1 The spelling is modernized according to the edition of Jeanroy. 



MONTAIGNE 199 

first problem attacked is that of our passions, which Montaigne 
considers in the light of the Stoics. Essay I contrasts pity with 
resolution: it is right to alleviate suffering but not to grow soft 
with it. Alexander was stern but he was magnanimous. In 
Essay III the theme is that our passions destroy our sense of 
reality: "la crainte, le desir, l'esperance, nous elancent vers 
l'avenir et nous derobent le sentiment et la consideration de ce 
qui est, pour nous amuser a ce qui sera." Essay VII, on the 
question of intention, concludes: " qu'il n'y a rien en bon escient 
en notre puissance que la volonte, en celle-la se fondent par neees- 
site et s'etablissent toutes les regies du devoir de rhomme." 
Finally, the culmination is reached in Essays XIX and XX, which 
deal with death and reproduce the maxim of Cicero, deduced from 
Plato's Phaedo, that " le but de notre carriere, c'est la mort." 
In all this there is little that is personal except the method; 
that is, the constant comparison of ideals with facts in dealing 
with human life, the subject of Montaigne's inquiry. But Book 
I contains also three extremely original contributions: Essay 
XXVII, De Vamitie, which, according to Montaigne, (cf. his 
friendship with La Boetie), is the highest and noblest of our 
affections; Essay XXX, Des cannibales, where the idea of the 
" noble savage " — so important for the later Rousseau — 
is first exploited, and Montaigne ironically concludes that 
rhomme simple et grossier may be a better witness of the eternal 
truth than les fines gens, just as what really distinguishes the 
savage from the Frenchman of the period, accustomed to war and 
pillage, is that he is morally better and does not wear trousers ; 
and Essay XXXVIII, De la solitude, in which the author inveighs 
against public life with its ambitions and servilities and points 
out that " la plus grande chose du monde, c'est de savoir etre 
a soi." This is probably the most Socratic of his ideas, that 
which has found most favor outside of France, and certainly 
the least French. 

We now reach the second period in the evolution of Montaigne's 
thought. In 1576 he became acquainted with the late Greek skep- 
tic, Sextus Empiricus, a Latin translation of whose Pyrrhoniae 
Hypotyposes was published by Henri Estienne in 1562. There 
were ten quotations from Sextus on the walls of Montaigne's 
library. Book II, Essay XII, the so-called Apologie de Raimond 



200 AMYOT, MONTAIGNE AND BRANTOME 

Sebond, has as its subtitle On la vanite de la raison humaine, 
and amounts really to an attack on the human mind — especially 
on the proud Reason which the Renaissance had exalted. Essay 
II, De I'ivrognerie, had shown how easily the mind is carried 
away. Essay VIII had dealt with the treatment of children: 
our affection for them should be neither animalistic nor artificial ; 
parents must be the companions of their children, who should 
not be beaten into obedience or they will not love honor and 
liberty. This essay, dedicated to Mme d'Estissac, should be 
compared to XXV, Book I, De I'institution des enfants, dedi- 
cated to Diane de Foix but not composed until 1579. Here 
Montaigne advocates an unstoical severe douceur: the object of 
education is to train the judgment, not to amass facts; children 
must be made to like learning, not to fear and abhor it ; above all, 
the world is the school in which the great minds are trained. 
Finally, Essay X, Des livres, corroborates these ideas: Mon- 
taigne admires the moral works of Cicero but he abominates his 
style; to Vergil and Lucretius he gives undivided admiration. 
Thus, when we reach the Apologie — aptly termed le recueil 
de toutes nos ignorances, incoherences et contradictions — the 
current of skepticism has grown into a mighty river threatening 
the solvency of man himself. " La presomption," says Montaigne, 
" est notre maladie naturelle et originelle. La plus calamiteuse 
et fragile de toutes les creatures, c r est rhomme et . . . la 
plus orgueilleuse." Here Montaigne is at one with Calvin, though 
his attack is against the intellect and not the will. And in 
another passage he all but writes a page of Pascal: 

Considerons done pour cette heure rhomme seul, sans secours 
etranger, arme seulement de ses armes, et depourvu de la grace 
et connaissance divine, qui est tout son honneur, sa force et le 
fondement de son etre. . . . Qui lui a persuade que ce branle 
admirable de la voute celeste, la lumiere eternelle de ces flambeaux 
roulant si fierement sur sa tete, les mouvements epouvantables de 
cette mer infinie, soient etablis et se continuent tant de siecles 
pour sa commodite et pour son service? Est-il possible de rien 
imaginer si ridicule que cette miserable et chetive creature, qui 
n'est pas seulement maitresse de soi, exposee aux offenses de toutes 
choses, se die maitresse et emperiere de Tunivers, duquel il n'est 
pas en sa puissance de connaitre la moindre partie, tant s'en faut 
de la commander? 



MONTAIGNE 201 

And there follows a long disquisition on the life of animals, all 
to the disadvantage of man, who is blamed for deserting Nature: 

Le soin de s'augmenter en sagesse et en science, ce fut la pre- 
miere ruine du genre humain; c'est la voie par ou il s'est precipite 
a la damnation eternelle. . . . Comme la vie se rend par la 
simplicite plus plaisante, elle se rend aussi plus innocente et meil- 
leure. 

— again an approach to Rousseau. 

Finally, with Book III — written in 1586-88 — he takes him- 
self as the object of study, as exemplifying the genus Man. 
Pascal once said: " ce n'est pas dans Montaigne, mais dans moi 
que je trouve tout ce que j'y vois." A remark that justifies 
Montaigne's superb avowal as to mankind in general and himself 
in particular which we have had occasion to admire before (see 
Introduction) . 

On attache aussi bien toute la philosophie morale a une vie 
populaire et privee qu'a une vie de plus riche etoffe. Chaque 
homme porte la forme entiere de Thumaine condition. Les auteurs 
se communiquent au peuple par quelque marque speciale et etran- 
gere; moi le premier par mon etre universel, comme M. de Mon- 
taigne, non comme grammairien, ou poete, ou juris-consulte. Si 
le monde se plaint que je parle trop de moi, je me plains de quoi 
il ne pense seulement a soi. (Essay I.) 

This concept of the " universal being " — inherent in all of us — 
now furnishes the counterpart to the "relativity " in which our 
limited life as individuals has placed us. The obstacles of time, 
space, ignorance, the differences of religion, nationality, manners 
and morals, vividly set forth in the Apologie, are thus overcome 
in the experience of mankind as a whole. Insular and circum- 
scribed we remain; our institutions which have grown up with 
us we cannot shake off. But we can become circumspect and 
open-minded in proportion to our self-knowledge and our ac- 
quaintance with other human beings. " Le pris de 1'ame," 
Montaigne now maintains, " ne consiste pas a aller hautement, 
mais ordonneement." There is no " plus utile science " than wis- 
dom (III) ; moderation is the best maxim. Socrates was 
right: " le mourir lui semble accident naturel et indifferent (IV)." 
In the essay Sur les vers de Virgile (V) , and there is no essay less 
Vergilian, Montaigne advocates measure in temperance: even 



202 AMYOT, MONTAIGNE AND BRANTOME 

" la sagesse a ses exces." Here the worldly, epicurean note 
rings clear and confronts us with the antithesis to stoicism in 
the words: " A mon avis, c'est le vivre heureusement non comme 
dit Antisthenes le mourir heureusement qui fait l'humaine 
felicite." 

Concerning Montaigne there may be as many opinions as there 
are minds. His very popularity has been prodigious. In English 
alone the Florio (1603) and the Cotton (1685) translations of the 
Essais have been frequently reprinted, whereas Shakespeare and 
Bacon are among his most notable debtors. Our own Emerson 
never wearies of paying him tribute. Besides, as Montaigne 
himself said, un abrege sur un bon livre est sot abrege. Mon- 
taigne is no logician; " carried along on the wings of his subject 
from one mountain top to another " (Miss Norton) , he is reckless 
in argument, digressing, interpolating, giving us opinions for 
fact, and the like. Thus, even the single essays lack unity and 
cogency. The famous Apologie, when closely studied, shows 
signs of being hastily made up of several originally distinct 
essays. All of this a summary necessarily misses. Neverthe- 
less, on one thing his critics may agree, and that is his repre- 
sentative character. He portrays mankind in its characteristic 
and conflicting moods as possibly no other writer ever has. And 
this remains his greatest quality. 

In the Essais we see the "man" Montaigne in every detail: 
vain, alert, peace-loving, inquisitive and tolerant. Despite a 
tendency to startle — epater — no writer is intellectually more 
honest. He is, it seems, precisely what he claims to be, neither 
more nor less. Such probity is not only interesting, it is en- 
ticing. It leads the reader — for once at least — to be himself, 
to imitate his author and look narrowly into his own soul, no 
matter how shallow it may be, for profundity was not the long 
suit of this gentleman of Perigord. Important in this connection 
are the charm and vividness of Montaigne's style. Sans couture 
is the epithet that has been applied to it. But this is equivalent 
to saying that it is conversational and sprightly. On the other 
hand, Montaigne can be elevated in tone and even eloquent: wit- 
ness the passage quoted above on Vhomme seul. Few writers, 
however, have had a juster sense of the value of words. " Cut 
these words," said Emerson, " they are vascular and alive " — an 



MONTAIGNE'S SKEPTICISM 203 

opinion that rather belies Montaigne's own conviction that the 
French language lacked vigor: 

II succombe ordinairement a une puissante conception; si vous 
allez tendu, vous sentez souvent qu'il languit sous vous et flechit. 

Montaigne, then, is preeminent in at least two respects. First, 

with reference to his negations. This aspect is Montaigne the 

skeptic: the Pyrrhonist whom Pascal both admired 
Importance 
of and feared, feared because of his lighthearted ac- 

Montaigne ceptance of our human limitations; the ancestor of 

the Voltaires, the Sainte-Beuves, the Renans and the Anatol-e 

Frances of French literature. The Montaigne, in short, of the 

sentence: Que sais-jef 

Skepticism — says Emerson — is the attitude assumed by the 
student in relation to the particulars which society adores, but 
which he sees to be reverenced only in their tendency and spirit. 
The ground occupied by the skeptic is the vestibule of the temple 
... it turns out that he is not the champion of the operative, 
the pauper, the prisoner, the slave. It stands in his mind that 
our life in this world is not quite so easy of interpretation as 
churches and school-books say. He does not wish to take ground 
against these benevolences, to play the part of the devil's attorney, 
and blazon every doubt and sneer that darkens the sun for him. 
But he says, there are doubts. 

This is the Montaigne who belongs to world-literature. In 
many respects he represents the best the French spirit has to 
give. It is true he is a constant interrogation. But he leads 
us through doubt to take pleasure in thinking and to admit views 
that are not necessarily ours. For, as Emerson concludes: 

The lesson of life is practically to generalize; to believe what 
the years and the centuries say against the hours; to resist the 
usurpation of particulars, to penetrate to their catholic sense. 

This brings us to Montaigne's second or positive side; namely, 
Montaigne the generalizer. In this respect he stands in close 
relation to his own time as the solvent of its conflicting forces. 
Rabelais, Calvin and Ronsard, to mention only the greatest, were 
enthusiasts. Each pressed and exaggerated his particular view. 
Each saw in antiquity an image of himself and forced the note as 
all enthusiasts will. By the seventies the world was disrupted 



204 AMYOT, MONTAIGNE AND BRANTOME 

into hostile camps on the basis of the Wore examen. Montaigne 
the pacifier came; he compared, he leveled. In his haphazard 
way he objectified human experience. The result was that he 
humbled the pride of man, very much like Calvin; but, unlike 
Calvin, he himself submitted to the conclusion he had reached. 
If, therefore, from his bourgeois and worldly standpoint, he recog- 
nized the value of human tradition and bent his head before the 
authority of Rome, it was not as a believer but as a forerunner 
of the seventeenth century, as one convinced of the validity of 
the opinion generate. And this opinion generate he created, on 
the basis of the common traits of mankind. " The proper study 
of mankind is man"; this would express the essence of his 
humanism, for the realization of which he indicated both the 
direction and the method that the seventeenth century was to 
pursue. 

If Montaigne is the moralizer of this period, Brantome has 
been correctly called its Suetonius. What Suetonius did for 
B . the lives of the Caesars, that Brantome has done for 

the Valois, especially Charles IX and Henry III. 
Like Montaigne, he was intensely curious as to life and persons, 
and he was well-bred and fond of travel, but whereas Montaigne 
reacted against his age, Brantome takes an almost childish joy 
in his surroundings, which were anything but elevating. The end 
of the sixteenth century produced a flood of memoir writers, who 
like Monluc, Margaret of Valois and La Noue all have an interest 
for the historian of social customs and manners. But while some 
of these are Brantome's superiors in style and most of them his 
betters in decency, none excel him in vividness or in the peculiar 
flavor with which he reproduces the nonchalance of the dying 
sixteenth century. As in a brightly colored picture-book he 
marshals before our eyes the pageantry, the bigotry, the corrup- 
tion and also the charm of that troubled period. Of all this he 
himself was part and parcel. 

Pierre de Bourdeille, reverend pere de Dieu, as this lay- 
holder of the Abbey of Brantome called himself, was born about 
1540 and lived until 1614. Originally from Perigord, he spent 
his early youth at the court of Marguerite d Angouleme, and after 
studying in Paris he went to Italy, where he served as a soldier. 
He sailed with Mary Stuart to Scotland, joined the Spanish forces 



BRANTOME 205 

in Africa, was present at the relief of Malta against the Turks, 
and in general led the life of a condottiere. Returning to France 
during the wars of religion, he finally became gentleman of the 
King's Chamber and aspired to be made governor of Perigord. 
But Henry III refused; whereupon Brantome planned to desert 
his ungrateful sovereign and enter the service of Spain. From 
this seditious step he was saved by a fall from his horse (1584), 
which, besides incapacitating him physically, turned him into a 
writer. During the next twenty years he recorded in his anec- 
dotal way the occurrences of the preceding thirteen. 

Brantome's works fall into two parts, treating respectively 
of the lives of men and of women. The Hommes consists, in M. 
Lalanne's edition, of the Grands capitaines, French and Spanish, 
the Couronnels, the Discours sur les duels — an institution which 
Brantome exalts — and the Rodomontades espagnoles. The 
original draft of the Hommes was completed as early as 1599. 
The Premier et second livre des Dames is better known today 
as the separate treatises of Dames illustres and Dames ga- 
lantes. A circumstance to be remembered is that Brantome left 
an elaborate will directing that his works be published en belle 
et grande lettre et grand volume y pour mieux paroistre. That 
this wish was not carried out was due to his niece, who feared 
the scandal that the publication might cause. Indeed, the works 
were not published until 1665-1666, just in time it is said to 
inspire Bussy-Rabutin. 

Brantome is too inaccurate to be a good biographer. His 
works abound in expressions like 'fax ouy parler and j'ai veu, 
which often not only conceal his source but permit him to have 
no source at all. Some of his more detailed " lives," like that 
of the Due de Guise, are too rambling and discursive to give an 
adequate idea of the personage concerned. On the whole, the 
figures of Catherine de Medicis, Anne of Brittany, Charles IX 
and Michel de l'Hospital come off best. But if Brantome fails 
as a historian, his portraits are life-like and striking. His art 
consists in nailing a trait and then making us see its significance. 
For example, he records of Catherine: 

Quand elle appelloit quelqu'un mon amy, e'est qu'elle l'estimoit 
• sot, ou qu'elle estoit en colere; 

or, in depicting Anne of Brittany, he slyly remarks: 



206 AMYOT, MONTAIGNE AND BRANTOME 

Au reste elle estoit tres bonne, fort misericordieuse et fort chari- 
table, ainsy que j'ay ouy dire aux miens. Vray est qu'elle estoit 
fort prompte a la vengeance; 

and there follows a startling example of how cruel she could be. 
It is such vivid snatches as these that explain Brantome's 
vogue with later generations. Monluc's Commentaires (1592) 
are better planned than anything of Brantome's, but they are 
concerned with military history and despite their excellent struc- 
ture contain far less of real life. So, too, the Discours politiques 
et militaires (1585) of La Noue — of whom we have a sketch 
from Brantome's pen — are remarkable for their impartiality 
and tolerance, a valuable asset in a historian, but again 
La Noue's refinement, which was considerable, does not make 
up for the solemn dullness of his style. Thus, licentious as he 
is — and this trait is confined largely to the Dames galantes — 
Brantome remains the most gifted chronicler of his epoch: 
his range is large, his sparkle delightful, and his sense of detail 
as keen as it is frank. In many ways he is comparable to 
Froissart. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE AGE OF HENRY IV AND THE COMMON 
SENSE OF MALHERBE 

The accession of Henry IV in 1594 heralds the restoration 
of peace and order on French soil. The Gascon King united in 
himself high political wisdom, a love of panache and a forgiving 
and tolerant nature. The famous Satire Menippee — the first 
successful journalistic satire in France — amid considerable 
jocularity and buffoonery made short shift of the opposing Lea- 
guers and vigorously welcomed Henry as " Notre vrai roy legi- 
time, naturel et souverain." From now on, politics were to 
converge more and more towards the absolutism of Louis XIV. 

It is characteristic, however, that the reign of Henry IV and 
the beginning of Louis XIII's stand for a transition; certainly 
in things artistic and literary. Side by side, we find literary 
rule and literary freedom. The epicurean common sense {bon 
sens) set free by the Essais of Montaigne culminates on the one 
hand in the stoical and religious reactions of Du Vair and Francois 
de Sales, and on the other in the brilliant but erratic satire of S- 
Mathurin Regnier — to which, however, the final answer is the 
triumphant, impersonal muse of Malherbe. Freedom again there 
is in the new-born tragi-comedy, made popularly successful by 
Hardy, and in the heroic pastoral, DTJrfe's Astree, of which so 
sensible a person as La Fontaine could say : 

Etant petit gargon je lisais son roman 
Et je le lis encore ayant la barbe grise. 

But in these genres also (see Book III) the effort is nevertheless 
toward uniformity of the spirit, which accompanies the great 
socialization that French literature is to undergo before becoming 
" Classical/' 

Thus, on the whole, the sixteenth century ends and the seven- 
teenth begins with a confident look into the future. This vision 

207 



208 THE AGE OF HENRY IV 

includes: peace; a stable and unified government; a surcease of 
the turbulent individualism of the Renaissance proper ; above all, 
a growing recognition of the social function of man; and finally, 
a gradual nationalization of language and culture and a closer 
welding of thought and expression — that is, a sense of style. 

In Etienne Pasquier, whose Recherches de la France began 
to appear in 1560, we already find a judicious spirit as regards 
. life and letters. Pasquier was a magistrate ; his turn 

of mind was not original, but he belongs to that large 
group of French jurists whose breadth and solidity have done 
honor to the legal profession. His Recherches consist of a 
desultory but thoroughly interesting collection of remarks on 
the history, politics, culture and literature of France. In all this 
there is much keen appreciation, not a little humor and, among 
other matters, an excellent account of the Pleiade movement. 
Pasquier does not hesitate to combat Ronsard's excessive imita- 
tions, throughout he upholds common sense and a certain innate 
taste, and while honoring the ancients he also defends French 
against Latin. He has the charm of an engaging and sensible 
causeur. Though he belonged strictly to the age of Ronsard, he 
lived until 1615 and took an active part in the royalist polemics 
against the Leaguers. 

With Henri Estienne (1528-1598), also of the earlier genera- 
tion, we reach a writer whose nationalistic views on language 
Henri did much to prepare the field for Malherbe. Author 

Estienne f a Thesaurus of Greek, with which language he ad- 

vocated the " conformity " of French, Estienne was a Huguenot, 
a Hellenist and a bourgeois to the core. Belonging to a family 
distinguished for its scholarship, he published (1554) a manu- 
script of Anacreon which deeply interested the Pleiade, and he 
wrote an Apologie pour Herodote, in which he aired his Prot- 
estant and scholarly ideals. His main importance, however, 
is that he fought the Italianate influence at court. In his 
Dialogues du nouveau langage frangais italianise (1578) Es- 
tienne speaks through the mouth of Celtophile — admirer of 
French — and upbraids the courtiers who, like Philausone, would 
corrupt the native stock of rich and pure words. The same 
theme is treated in his better written but incomplete Precellence 



THE SATIRE MEXIPPEE 209 

du langage irangais 1 1579) : not only is Italian foreign to France,, 
it is actually inferior to French in grace, force and excellence. 

In 1567 Jean Bodin published the six books of his Re pub'. 
where in words devoid of passion — but also of charm — he laid 
The down the theory of the French monarchical state. 

" Satire With singularly clear vision Bodin saw in absolute 

Memppee' m0 narchy the extension of the tribal or family idea, 
and in the monarch the patriarch of the French people. The 
Satire pee !l594i confirms this idea at the very moment 

when the efforts of patriotic Protestants and Catholics 
triumphed in the victory of Henry IV. Thus the pamphlet 
lacks the political influence often attributed to it. As a matter 
of fact, it is a literary parody of the Estates of the League that 
had been unsuccessfully called to choose a king. 

In its original form ( the present title is taken from the Saturae 
Metdppeae of Varro and did not appear until the sixth edition) 
the satire was the work of Jean Leroy. whose collaborators were 
Gillot. clerk-advocate of the Parliament, the poets Passerat and 
in, and Chrestien and Pithou. convened Protestants. The 
Memppee opens with a harangue in Rabelaisian style on the 
:ea Catholicon — ; :e catholiqut-jesuite-espagnole 

— whereby the Leaguers would achieve their own fortune and 
the enslavement of France. Then follows an account of the open- 
ing of the Estates: a description of the tapestries with which the 
hall is hung, each portraying some betrayal of the French cause; 
a catalogue of the leaders of the League, with pointed remarks 
on their unsavory private and public lives ; and finally, in mock- 
heroic style, the speeches of the Leaguers themselves. These 
display unusual variety and skill of treatment. Partly burlesque, 
partly true to reality, always witty, they culminate in the speech 
of Claude d'Aubray. which is wholly serious and eloquent. It 
covers about half the book and is a happy combination of histor- 
ical retrospect, analysis of politics and arraignment of the 
Leaguers. D'Aubray was the leader of the Politique s or enemies 
of the League: and it is likely that his speech was actually 
delivered before the Estates. 

While the Memppee is too disproportionate and uneven to 
rank as a classic, it yet shows a great advance in the scope and 
art of French satire. It analyzes political corruption with a 



210 THE AGE OF HENRY IV 

minuteness worthy of Rabelais, and it drives its lessons home by 
a series of thrusts that are in the best vein of Gallic irony. 

But the ethical force of the time is found in Charron and Du 
Vair, both of whom followed in the footsteps of Montaigne. In 
Charron and fact, Pierre Charron (1541-1603), who had been 
Du Vair Montaigne's pupil, was the chief organizer of his 
master's thought. Like Du Vair, Charron was a legist and a theo- 
logian, who began his literary career with a treatise on the Trois 
Verites (1593), in which the existence of God, the truth of Chris- 
tianity and the orthodoxy of the Roman Church are defended as 
unassailable. This work was followed by his philosophical Traite 
de la sagesse (1601), where he systematized Montaigne's ideas in 
orthodox form. Taking the Apologie seriously, Charron turned 
the Que sais-jef into a positive Je ne sais, and set up this maxim 
as a rational basis of the Christian religion. Thus he antici- 
pates Pascal, but he does so without genius, heavily and dully. 
How closely he builds on Montaigne is evident from the state- 
ment: 

La nation, le pays, le lieu donnent la religion — Thomme sans 
son seu est fait Juif ou Chrestien, a cause qu'il est ne dedans la 
Juiverie ou Chrestiente. 

But Charron would use tolerance to uphold tradition. Mindful of 
the "three truths," he would reintegrate his nation in Roman 
Catholicism, which makes citoyens du monde and avoids the 
dangers of the opinion triee et particuliere. This is an important 
step' toward the French Classical point of view. Charron's book 
had great success, although the Sorbonne found it reprehensible. 
As a personality Guillaume du Vair (1556-1621) is far superior 
to Charron. Councilor of the Parliament of Paris, envoy to 
England, and finally bishop of Lisieux, Du Vair was one of the 
leading Politiques, defending this cause with steadfastness and 
eloquence. To him the stoicism of the early Montaigne was the 
rule of life. Accordingly, his De la philosophic des sto'iques and 
De la Constance show him as a practical moralist to whom philoso- 
phy is a guide to conduct. Direct and even poetic in style, Du 
Vair discards all show of erudition and comes out strongly for 
Reason in its two-fold function: first, as the liberator from 
passion, and second, as the guide to faith by its demonstration 



FRANgOIS DE SALES 211 

of our human limitations. In all this there is nothing new ex- 
cept the force and cogency of statement. But Du Vair's 
sense of conviction, shown again in his De U eloquence frangaise, 
won him readers and explains his hold on the next generation, 
especially on Malherbe. 

Although the stoicism of Du Vair gave strength it did not con- 
sole; and the times were now ripe for a conciliation of religion 
Saint Fran- w ^ n the emotions of the heart. To have achieved 

5ois de this was the beatitude of Saint Francois de Sales. 

Sales 

The path he mapped out was, like that of his teachers, 

the Jesuits, a chemin de velours: a path festooned with roses, 
where religious devotion became attractive and moral regenera- 
tion was opened to the " worldly " by an appeal to their sense of 
delicacy and refinement. De Sales' psychology is essentially 
a casuistry of love, with the gradations and nuances carefully 
drawn. But beneath his docile exterior this reformer concealed 
an austere and unshakable will. He knew that the Christian 
life demanded humility, and humility before God on the part 
of his aristocratic flock became the goal of his unsparing efforts. 

He was born in Savoy, whose prince he served in trying to 
redeem the district of Chablais from the Protestant heresy. This 
attempt met with little success, and being sent to Paris in 1602 
on a mission, he associated himself with a group of mystics, the 
chief of whom was Mme Acarie. He now gave up the plan of con- 
verting Protestants, and although he resisted the allurements of- 
fered by Henry IV and returned to Savoy as titular bishop of 
Geneva, he never loosened his hold on his French followers. His 
influence was great with women; through Mme de Chantal, 
grandmother of Mme de Sevigne, he established the order of 
the Visitation, and it is to her that his best Epitres spirituelles 
are addressed. 

But his great work, second in popularity only to the Imitation 
of Thomas a Kempis, is the Introduction a la vie devote. This 
and the complementary Traite de V amour de Dieu (1606) con- 
tain all that is most distinctive in de Sales' teaching and theology. 
Starting with the premise that the Christian life is essentially a 
life of love — an idea already exploited by Luther — de Sales 
evolves the thesis that the redemption of man proceeds, not from 
sudden abnegation and sacrifice, but from the gradual diffusion of 



212 THE AGE OF HENRY IV 

love into every act, even the smaller ones, of this earthly life. 
Thus he mollifies the externals of religion, without, however, giving 
up its main doctrines, and by beginning with the social virtues — 
such as good breeding and consideration of others — he seeks to 
insinuate into the social complex the sterner, unworldly qualities 
of Christianity. Francois de Sales' style — langage de la paix 
he calls it — is in the main winsome, however flowery it may seem 
at present. Many of his images are far-fetched, though it is part 
of his general purpose to draw them with abundance from Nature 
and literature. On the other hand, with an eye to le commun 
usage, he writes excellent, singularly modern French, and in this 
respect as in so many others he leads up to Bossuet and 
Bourdaloue. 

In short, the Introduction a la vie devote, begun as a formal 
course of instruction for Philothee — in real life, Mme de 
Charmoisy — anticipates the courtly, religious literature of the 
era of Louis XIV. Its special significance is that for the first 
time de Sales bridges the gulf between theology and worldly 
society. Its author was canonized by the Roman Church in 1665. 

While the new movement towards socialization was thus claim- 
ing the support of the church, its influence was also manifest 
in the domain of pure literature, in poetry. And in this trans- 
formation Malherbe is the outstanding and significant factor. 

Francois de Malherbe is best known by the title of docteur en 
negative, which relates him to the Pleiade as the antithesis of 
M lh b Ronsard and as the orderer and purifier of poetic 

style. A curious mixture of pedant and artist, 
Malherbe is one of the pillars of Classicism because of an in- 
stinct for harmony and his unswerving common sense: 

Le sens commun, contre lequel, la religion a part, vous savez il 
n'y a orateur au monde qui me put rien persuader. 

No man was surer of himself than he. We can picture him to our- 
selves, in his room at the Hotel de Bellegrade in Paris, deliver- 
ing orders on the distinction between pas and point, the gerund- 
ive and the present participle — as if, says Balzac, it were a 
matter of two neighboring peoples, jealous of their frontiers. 
But it was this meticulous care that gave to the French language 
the clarity, purity and cadence which it has in Corneille and 



MALHERBE 213 

Racine. Thus what Malherbe took away in variety, exuberance, 
and emotionalism, he restored in firmness, structure and restraint. 
In his treatment of the Alexandrine he fashioned the vehicle in 
which the generation of 1660 was to find glorious expression. 
Hence the aptness of Boileau's appraisal: 

Enfin Malherbe vint; et le premier en France 
Fit sentir dans les vers une juste cadence. 



Marchez done sur ses pas, aimez la purete, 
Et de son tour heureux imitez la clarte. 

Malherbe's ascent to Parnassus was slow and painstaking. He 
was born at Caen, Normandy, in 1555. Having been trained 
for the bar at Bale and Heidelberg, he went with the Duke of 
Angouleme to Provence, and there he married a widow from 
whom he had two children, both of whom he survived. It is 
significant that Malherbe, whose best remembered poem is the 
Consolation de Monsieur du Perier sur la mort de sa fille, never 
gave expression in verse to his own grief. He believed that a 
poet should be the objective purveyor of rationalized emotions, 
and he could never bring himself to regard the death of his own 
children in this stern light. His first published poem, Les 
Larmes de Saint-Pierre, is an imitation of Tansillo and still in 
the Italianate manner of Desportes. But with the famous 
Consolation (1598) and an Ode to Marie de Medicis (1600) 
Malherbe comes into his own. Henceforth he follows un- 
erringly the path of simplicity and versified prose. 

In 1605 Malherbe took steps to be appointed poet laureate of 
the Bourbon dynasty. Besought by the poet's friends, Henry IV, 
who hesitated at first, was charmed by Malherbe's Priere pour le 
Roi allant en Limousin and finally gave orders to M. de Belle- 
garde to provide for the poet in Paris. Under Louis XIII 
Malherbe's prestige suffered no relapse; on the contrary, Marie 
de Medicis clung to the person who had celebrated her charms, 
and in spite of opposition from without, his position as arbiter 
of French letters was unshaken until his death (1628). 

The amount of his published verse is small — some four thou- 
sand lines. In these, as has often been said, Malherbe follows the 
lead of Ronsard — but of the Ronsard of the odelette and the 
elegie. And these genres he emasculates and rationalizes. 






214 THE AGE OF HENRY IV 

" Malherbe," says Brunetiere, " conceit un sonnet ou une 
elegie comme une unite logique qui demontre, discute, tout au 
moins expose quelque chose de bien determine." Poetry to him 
is a metier like any other; it is not a matter for the learned, 
and least of all for the " divinely inspired." Therefore his re- 
mark that the porters of the Port au Foin were his guides in 
speech, by which he meant that even they would understand his 
verse, so clear and unmistakable it was. Negatively, then, he 
opposed the Pleiade, accepting the classical genres, but restrict- 
ing their scope, omitting everything that seemed obscure or learn- 
ed or imaginative. Positively, he developed la poesie oratoire — 
so peculiarly French — with its sumptuous commonplaces, its in- 
stinct for the right word in the right place, its succession of 
harmonious Alexandrines. This type of verse lacks color; it 
is architectonic, not picturesque; it does not move the reader, 
it persuades him; it appeals to the universal reason and not to 
the individual imagination. Malherbe's most famous verse: 

Et, rose, elle a vecu ce que vivent les roses, 
L'espace d'un matin, 

is a case in point. Embodied in a long argument on the inevi- 
tability of death — and what could be more commonplace? — this 
line is the expression of the Pleiade's favorite theme in as simple, 
as clear, as grammatical and as universal a form as possible. 
And yet the line carries a sense of conviction, a stoical peace 
and tranquillity, which are perhaps unique. It need hardly 
be added that Malherbe achieved such impeccable effects rarely. 
An Ode on the victory of Louis at La Rochelle, written at the 
ripe age of seventy -two, is probably Malherbe's most " artistic " 
success. 

But if Malherbe's muse was oratory rather than poetry, this 
quality stood him in good stead as a critic of language and versi- 
fication. His Commentaire sur Desportes, although merely a mar- 
ginal comment on a copy of Desportes' works, embodies the prin- 
ciples of his reforms. 

Here the leading idea is " usage," controlled by the trinity of 
purity, clearness and precision. Desportes seemed to him 
" padded " and " redundant," and his first desire was to put 
French vocabulary into a strait-jacket. In this he followed the 



MALHERBE'S DISCIPLES 215 

tendency of his period against improvisation. Besides, many of 
the Pl&ade's archaisms were out of date ; quite a number of their 
foreign borrowings and dialect words had remained un-French; 
Desportes and even Ronsard had made too free a use of diminu- 
tives. In these directions Malherbe's pruning was wise. On the 
other hand, he went too far in his objection to certain adjectives 
like soucieux, to all gerundives, to the use of technical terms in 
literature, above all to the word ideal — " un mot d'ecole et cmi ne 
se doit point dire en choses d'amour." With much better reason 
he tried to fix the exact meaning of words ; he practically estab- 
lished the modern word-order; and he correctly considered rime 
as the important feature of French versification, thus his opposi- 
tion to " overflow " (enjambement) and his advocacy of " rich 
rime." As Brunetiere observes, Malherbe is in many respects the 
ancestor of the Parnassian poets of the nineteenth century. 
Chapelain affirmed that " il a ignore la poesie." But certainly 
Malherbe understood the instrument of poetry better than 
Chapelain. This we should not forget when we have in mind the 
sum total of his negations. 

It must not be thought, however, that the reforms of Malherbe 
won easy or immediate acceptance. Those followers who did 
Malherbe's him most honor were of the generation of Boileau. 
Disciples Among his immediate disciples were Francois 
Maynard (1582-1646) and Honorat de Bueil, Marquis de Racan 
(1589-1670) . It has been justly said that these two, if combined, 
would have made one excellent poet. Malherbe himself thought 
that Maynard lacked force and that Racan was careless in style ; 
probably the reverse is closer to the truth. In any case, despite 
much repetition and monotony, Maynard has left us two note- 
worthy selections: the one a charming Dedicate to his own book — 

Petit livre que j'ai poli; 1 

and the other, an ode entitled La belle Vieille, where for a brief 
moment he soars on the wings of sentiment: 

Ce n'est pas d'aujourd'hui que je suis ta conquete, 
Huit lustres ont suivi le jour que tu me pris, 
Et j'ai fidelement aime ta belle tete 
Sous des cheveux chatains et sous des cheveux gris. 

1 See Catullus, Liber I, 1. 



J 



216 THE AGE OF HENRY IV 

Yet Racan, who had a distinguished career in the army and at 
court, excelled both Maynard and Malherbe in the musical quality 
of his verse and in a truly poetic grasp of simple and natural 
situations. His Arthenice ou les Bergeries, a pastoral drama, is 
charmingly written; while his celebrated Stances a Tircis is a 
melodious development of a poetic commonplace and elicited the 
admiration of La Fontaine. 

Foremost in the opposition to Malherbe were Mathurin Regnier, 
Mile de Gournay, and the libertin but truly lyrical Theophile de 
Malherbe's Viau. In general, they represent the last outburst of 
Opponents ^he Renaissance furor poeticus before it was smoth- 
ered under the weight of Classical rule and decorum. 

Mathurin Regnier (1573-1613) was the nephew of Desportes 
and Malherbe's junior by eighteen years. He spent part of his 
youth in Italy and later enjoyed the protection of the Marquis 
de Cceuvres, who wished to present him at court. But Regnier 
refused, quite content to bask in the glory reflected by his uncle, 
whose excellent dinners, however, he did not fail to attend. It 
was at one of these that Desportes invited Malherbe to listen to 
one of his compositions, whereupon the latter replied: "Let us 
dine first, your soup is better than your psalms." Whether this 
tale is literally true or not, Regnier took his uncle's side; and 
every word he wrote breathes opposition to Malherbe. His fame 
rests on his Satires, the best of which is Macette, and, as regards 
Malherbe, the well-known Ninth Satire, addressed to Rapin. 

The key note of Regnier is gayety; it is characteristic of his 
satire that it is never ill-humored. Thus he unites the Gallic 
wit of Marot with the enthusiasm of the Pleiade, and he owes not 
a little to Ovid and the Italians, especially Ariosto. But he 
has also the defect of his quality. However sprightly, he lacks 
moral indignation; the only exception to this being Macette, 
which is also his best written work. As his satire is social and 
not political, Regnier has given it a note of universality; 
and Boileau, who condemned his platitudes and lack of order, 
yet saw that for knowledge of human nature Regnier is compa- 
rable to Moliere. 

Regnier excels in bold strokes and brilliant flashes rather than 
in sustained utterance. Already in the Second Satire, on poets, 
he hits off the telling line: 

Meditant un sonnet, medite un eveche — 



MALHERBE'S OPPONENTS 217 

which might apply to Desportes. Nowhere does his insight ap- 
pear better than in describing the pedantry of Malherbe. It is 
the old problem of art versus nature, and Regnier is of course for 
nature. The Ninth Satire is a brilliant excursus on this theme, 
negatively presented: 

lis rampent bassement, faibles d'inventions, 
Et n'osent, peu hardis, tenter les fictions, 
Froids a l'imaginer; car s'ils font quelque chose 
C'est proser de la rime, et rimer de la prose. 

And so in Macette, Regnier combines nature with wit in order to 
give us one of the best portraits in French literature. Macette 
is the pandering woman: a kind of female Tartuffe, a descendant 
of the Faux-Semblant of the Roman de la Rose, but admirably 
individualized by Regnier, who detested hypocrisy: 

Sans art elle s'habille, et simple en contenance 
Son teint mortifie preche la penitence. 



Loin du monde elle fait sa demeure et son gite, 
Son ceil tout penitent ne pleure qu'eau benite, 
Enfin c'est un exemple, en ce siecle tortu, 
D 'amour, de charite, d'honneur et de vertu. 

Such portraiture as this redeems Regnier 's faults of style — and 
of person. He is, if we make due allowances, the Villon of his 
time; and because of his spontaneity he has never lacked readers. 
Mile Le Jars de Gournay (1556-1645) had no such good for- 
tune. She who called herself the fille d'alliance of Montaigne, 
whose works she edited, was old-maidish in appearance and 
character. On the other hand, she was not lacking in esprit, 
and her prose work U Ombre (1687) defends Ronsard and 
banters Malherbe in an engaging and picturesque style. It 
appeared to her that Malherbe's entire contribution consisted in 
polissure, and she regretted, but in vain, that 

ils tondent la poesie de liberte, de dignite, de richesse, et pour 
le dire en un mot, de fleur, de fruit et d'espoir. 

The third figure of the opposition, Theophile de Viau (1596- 
1626), is described better as a free-lance than as an ally of 
Regnier and Mile de Gournay. Indeed, he was not above 
combining 

La douceur de Malherbe et Tardeur de Ronsard. 



218 THE AGE OF HENRY IV 

But life made him a profligate, and he squandered his powers on 
unworthy objects and in defying — par bel air — the pedantry 
of Malherbe. He is generally remembered by his irregular 
tragedy Pyrame et Thisbe (1617), where with true Elizabethan 
freedom he produced the hyperbole: 

Le voila, le poignard qui du sang de son maitre 
S'est souille lachement; il en rougit, le traitre; 

and thus merited the censure of Boileau. But libertin 1 
that he was, he possessed an inborn sense of form and a feeling 
for Nature. Note the harmony of the lines that he attributes to 
Apollo: 

C'est moi qui penetrant la durete des arbres 

Qui fais taire les vents, qui fais parler les marbres, 
Et qui trace au destin la conduite des rois; 

and compare the soft, caressing mood of his Solitude: 

Un froid et tenebreux silence 
Dort a Fombre de ces ormeaux, 
Et les vents battent les rameaux 
D'une amoureuse violence. 

If Theophile was a late-comer, a survival of the age of Ronsard, 
his verse shows that after Malherbe lyrism was not dead in France 
but only slumbering. Twenty-two editions of his works appeared 
in fifty years, and the youthful Academy picked him as one 
of the authors on whose vocabulary its Dictionary should be 
based. It was the satire of Boileau that killed his vogue; but 
some of his quality passed into Voiture and Racine, until finally 
Romanticism gave it a glorious rebirth. 

1 On the libertins or epicureans, see Bk. Ill, Ch. V. 



BOOK III 
PRE-CLASSICISM 

CHAPTER I 
SOCIAL FORM AND THE SALON WRITERS 

The seventeenth century is the grand Steele of the French. 
It is for them what the age of Elizabeth is for the English, the 
Cinquecento for the Italians. It is then that France has her 
most representative writers, those who reflect the national 
qualities at their best. It is then that the Renaissance ideal of 
absolute monarchy, realized in Louis XIV, places France at the 
political head of Europe. Not only does the much abused 
phrase VEtat e'est moi express the degree of unity to which 
French culture was to attain, but the court at Versailles is the 
symbol of this resplendent time. Here politics and art and 
literature, centering about the person of the King, achieve a 
harmonious cooperation that is the keynote of Classicism. 

This " point of perfection in art," which La Bruyere later 
compares to " ripeness in Nature," was however not reached 
Different at once. The Classical Period itself does not begin 
Periods un ^j 1553^ w fth ^he triumphal entry of Mazarin 

into Paris after the Wars of the Fronde, and it ends before the 
century is over, with the Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns 
in 1687. The preceding age, from 1624 — when Richelieu came 
into power — until 1653, is one of struggle and preparation. 
We give it the name of Pre-Classicism, as showing at once its 
direction and its formative character. 

In politics this period stands for the destruction of the enemies 
of the crown, both within and without the kingdom. With great 
singleness of purpose Richelieu shattered the last stronghold of 
the Protestants (La Rochelle, 1628), combatted the supremacy 

219 



220 SOCIAL FORM AND THE SALON WRITERS 

of Spain, crushed the conspiracy of the nobles led by Cinq-Mars, 
and in every way strove for national unity. His own interest 
in letters, and Richelieu's literary gifts were not conspicuous, 
was made contributory to this purpose. He worked for the 
principle of national authority in literature with the same zeal 
with which he discouraged the French admiration for Spain 
(see below, his attitude on the Cid). The hand he took in the 
establishment of the French Academy in 1629 is another proof 
of his policy; namely, to give the country a standard of speech 
which though national should be universally clear and precise. 
Mazarin, who succeeded Richelieu as prime-minister — a post 
that he held during the minority of Louis XIV — was the in- 
direct cause and central figure of the Wars of the Fronde. 
These were the last attempts of the feudal aristocracy to throw 
off the usurpations of the crown. Serious as the revolt was, 
it had in it the elements of opera-bouffe. The Frondeurs, 
including such illustrious persons as the Grand Conde, Cardinal 
de Retz and the Duchess of Longueville, were divided among 
themselves; personal vanity and bombast influenced greatly 
their actions; and when peace and order were finally restored in 
Paris, the effect on the youthful Louis XIV was to discourage in 
him any attempt to govern the country by constitutional means. 

It was principally in the development of social form or 
etiquette that the Pre-Classical period was fruitful. Under 
the impact, first of Italy, but also of Spain, social intercourse 
is cultivated on a new scale; good manners and deportment 
are encouraged for the distinction they give ; and this movement 
furnishes the background for most of the art and literature of 
the century. 

The courtiers of Henry IV deserve that name only by 
tolerance. Fresh from the battle-field, they carried into social 
relations the swagger \ +v »e rudeness, the license of their honest 
but boisterous natures ,s true that Henry's own attitude 

was offset by his marriage in 1600 to Marie de Medicis, who 
invited the Italian Marino to Paris in 1615. Marino was a 
representative of the euphuistic or affected style, and he 
undoubtedly had an influence on the refinement of manners and 
speech in France. At the same time, the birth of social form 



HOTEL DE RAMBOUILLET 221 

occurred not at the French court but in the house 01 a private 
citizen: the famous Catherine de Vivonne, Marquise de Ram- 
bouillet. 

Catherine was the daughter of Jean de Vivonne, French 
ambassador to Rome, and Julia Savelli, a Roman lady of 
The Hotel de distinction. She had married Charles d'Angennes, 
Rambouiilet w ^ m 1611 became the Marquis de Rambouillet. 
Of her social and intellectual charms Mile de Scudery writes as 
follows in one of her well-known " literary portraits ": 

L 'esprit de Cleomire [one of the anagrams applied to Catherine, 
Arthenice is another] n'est pas un de ces esprits qui n'ont de 
lumiere que celle que la nature leur donne, car elle l'a cultive 
soigneusement. Elle sait diverses langues, et n'ignore presque 
rien qui merite d'etre su; mais elle le sait sans faire semblant 
de le savoir, et on dirait, a l'entendre parler, tant elle est modeste, 
qu'elle ne parle de toutes choses admirableraent que par le simple 
sens commun et par le seul usage du monde. 

But distinguished as Catherine was, her delicacy was overdone. 
Her sensibilities were offended by such a word as teigneux 
(" scurvy ") , and, as Tallemant des Reaux records, she and her 
husband " vivaient un peu trop en ceremonie." 

Yet it was precisely through ceremony that she aimed to give 
her countrymen that much needed refinement. Withdrawing 
in 1613 from a court which seemed to her barbarous, Catherine 
opened her house near the Louvre to her own circle of admirers 
and friends. The house had been previously remodeled, ac- 
cording to plans made by the Marquise herself, to receive a 
larger company than did most dwellings of the period. The 
drawing-room, which was also the Marquise's bed-room, had 
been tinted in blue — hence the Chambre bleue — and had been 
divided by a railing, behind which stood the bed. On each side 
of the bed were spaces known respectively as the devant and 
the ruelle. It was the habit of Catherine, seated on the bed, to 
receive the evening's guests first in one passage and then in the 
other; so that ruelle soon became synonymous with a reception 
itself — just as later on, when with advancing years the 
Marquise moved her bed into an alcove, an alcoviste is one who 
frequents such receptions. 

The company who were invited to share this official intimacy 



222 SOCIAL FORM AND THE SALON WRITERS 

were not only people of rank but also men of letters. Among 
the former were Richelieu, the Due de la Tremoille, Mme de 
Longueville, the Marquis de Montausier, 1 and later, Mme de 
La Fayette and Mme de Sevigne. The men of letters included 
most of the illustrious; notably, Malherbe, Chapelain, Voiture, 
Scudery, Rotrou and Corneille. Conversation, of course, was the 
great attraction of this feast of reason; although actual parlor 
games — imported from Italy — dancing, music and impromptus 
of various kinds, were part of the entertainment. Yet conversa- 
tion claimed the foreground with these adepts of culture, and 
their discourse sparkled with conceits after the manner of Marino 
and hyperboles in the style of the Spaniard Gongora. 

Affected purism or " preciosity " has a bad name. At the 
beginning of the seventeenth century, forms of affectation, 
. . „ partly independent of each other, spread through 
Europe like a disease. Lyly's Euphues appeared in 
England as early as 1579; considerably later in Spain came the 
culteranismo of Gongora. Rut in France the precieux move- 
ment was probably the most productive of good results. The 
Marquise lived until 1665, and the Hotel de Rambouillet had 
several periods of influence. 

Its greatest brilliancy was from 1630 to 1648. Between 
these years it served the useful purpose of listening eagerly to 
a letter from Balzac, a criticism by Chapelain, a play by 
Corneille — even if it pronounced Chapelain's epic 2 " beautiful 
but excessively tiresome " and went into raptures over the 
Guirlande de Julie, a chaplet of poems presented by Montausier 
to the Marquise's daughter on her birthday. The effect of 
such feminine control was bound to be two-sided. On the one 
hand, conversational and epistolary style flourished; both 
language and literature shook off the last vestiges of pedantry 
and gained measurably in precision and sparkle; never was wit 
more brilliant or more trenchant. On the other hand, the 
cleavage between " society " and the " people " is increased ; 
literature becomes mainly the expression of a super-refined 
class; the quip or pointe is cultivated for its own sake, and the 

1 Montausier was the suitor of Julie d'Angennes, the Marquise's daughter. It 
is characteristic that he was kept waiting fifteen years before Julie married him. 

2 La Pucelle 



PRECIOSITY 223 

commonplace shunned. It is enough, in order to understand 
the loss to language, to note that a useful word like poitrine 
was tabooed because the butcher said poitrine de veau or that 
Somaize in his Dictionnaire des Pretieuses records soustien de 
la vie for " bread." Most of all, the romances of the age were 
to suffer from this restriction: their characters do not eat 
or drink, nor breathe any other atmosphere than that of their 
own sublimated sentiments. 

For many of these characteristics the Hotel de Rambouillet 
was not to blame. The word precieuse, meaning an " affected 
woman " gains currency about 1655, while a " mannered style " 
is a recurrent phenomenon in French from the Middle Ages 
forward. But what a distinguished woman might permit 
herself, in an imitator would seem distorted and out of place, 
and Catherine had many imitators. Among them were Mme de 
Sable — the friend of Pascal — and Mile Paulet, called la belle 
lionne because of her tawny hair. Most noteworthy of all is 
Mile de Scudery, whose samedis, over which she presided under 
the name of Sappho, gave the entree to people quite as 
literary as the frequenters of the Marquise, but less distinguished 
in social rank and thus visibly more affected in their attitude. 
Finally, when we add to these great ladies those numerous 
provincial dames who easily fell a victim to the refining habit, 
we understand the reason in 1659 for Moliere's Pretieuses 
ridicules, where not only the imitation but preciosity itself is 
satirized. From this date on, precieuse could have no other 
than an unfavorable meaning, while the movement itself lapsed 
of its own ineptitude. As Menage remarked, when after the 
performance of Moliere's comedy he took Chapelain aside: 

Monsieur . . . nous approuvions, vous et moi, toutes les 
sottises qui viennent d'etre critiquees si finement et avec tant de 
bon sens. II nous faudra bruler ce que nous avons adore et adorer 
ce que nous avons brule. 

Moreover, at that moment the eyes of the cultivated world 
were fixed on another spectacle: the rising glory of the court 
of Louis XIV. With this arbiter of elegance no other could 
compete, though the literary and artistic salon is henceforth a 
French institution. 



224 SOCIAL FORM AND THE SALON WRITERS 

Associated intimately with the Hotel de Rambouillet are 
two letter-writers of note. The first is Jean-Louis Guez, Sieur 
Louis Guez de Balzac (1597-1654), whose grandiloquence laid 
de Balzac ^he foundation for French oratory and the rise of a 
Classical style. 

Educated by the Jesuits, Balzac traveled and then entered the 
service of a French grandee, the later Cardinal de la Valette, 
with whom he passed two years in Rome. But the greater 
part of Balzac's life was spent on his estates in Angouleme, 
, whence he kept in contact with the refined world by his writings, 
especially his Letters. In addition to these and various discours 
addressed to Mme de* Rambouillet, Balzac also wrote a Prince, 
the Socrate chretien and Aristippe ou de la cow. But it was 
his Letters, the first of which appeared in 1624 and which were 
an event at the Hotel de Rambouillet, that made him famous. 

In Balzac's ideas there was nothing very original; little that 
cannot be found in Amyot or Montaigne or the ancients. 
Moreover, no writer is less intimate; Balzac has no abandon, 
no moment when he is not consciously building a phrase. As 
Lanson remarks, it is the author and not the man who speaks 
to us in him. Balzac wraps in a cloak of rhetoric even the 
little things of life. Thanking a friend for a gift of peacocks, 
he writes: 

Je connais mes richesses et en suis connu, et apres avoir lu 
jusqu'a ne voir goutte, je viens delasser ma vue travaillee dans cet 
admirable vert, qui m'est tout ensemble un divertissement et 
un remede. 

But he accomplished two notable things. He made French 
prose eloquent by giving it cadence, and he incorporated into it 
the Renaissance concept of the Roman patriot and of the 
honnete homme. It is easy to imagine with what effect his 
high-sounding phrases fell on the ears of Mme de Rambouillet's 
circle, especially when they contained such grandiose common- 
places as: 

Un peu d'esprit et beaucoup d'autorite, voila ce qui a toujours 
gouverne le monde. 



BALZAC AND VOITURE 225 

Thus Balzac did for prose what Malherbe had done for verse. 
His type of Roman lives again in the plays of Corneille; note 
the following from the Letter on Cinna, addressed to Corneille 
himself: 

L'empereur le fit consul, et vous l'avez fait honnete homme: 
mais vous l'avez pu faire par les lois d'un art, qui polit et orne la 
verite. 

That is, the French Cinna is a Roman plus the rules of decorum, 
and it is the function of art to embellish nature. 

The significance of Balzac, then, lies in the impetus he gave 
to writing as such. He lacked the genius to create ideas or 
to invent new forms. He spent his life in making phrases, but 
of these he was a master-builder. He understood the harmonies 
of French to an eminent degree, and he taught his generation 
the value of paragraphs, transitions and the mot propre. His 
sentences, unlike those of his predecessors, are balanced and 
well-proportioned. Thus he fashioned the instrument of 
rhetorical French prose for future writers; the style of Bossuet 
is built upon that of Balzac. 

On the other hand, the so-called (Euvres of Vincent Voiture 
(1598-1648) remain landlocked in Mme de Rambouillet's 
Vincent salon. They are in every way its expression; and 

Voiture therefore the elegant badinage with which they are 

filled has long since lost its flavor. However, Voiture was not 
a professional writer, and his poems and letters were not published 
until after his death. 

Son of a wine merchant of Amiens, Voiture was another of 
Cardinal de la Valette's proteges. He was presented early 
in life to the Marquise, whose unofficial master-of-ceremonies 
he became. Grace and wit fitted him well for this role; and he 
organized dances and excursions, played practical jokes on the 
Marquise and bantered his associates in trifling verse and prose. 
These gifts and an undercurrent of sound judgment won him 
the favor of Richelieu, who sent him on diplomatic missions and 
permitted him to round out his career as an honnete homme. 

In his Letters Voiture displays finesse and an innate delicacy 
of phrasing, which are in sharp contrast with the Spanish bombast 
then in fashion. How effective his mockery was appears from 



226 SOCIAL FORM AND THE SALON WRITERS 

the Letter to Mme de Rambouillet on the word car, which it 
was rumored the Academy would banish from the language. 
He writes: 

Je ne sais pour quel interet ils tachent d'oter a car ce qui lui 
appartient pour le donner a pour ce que, ni pourquoi ils veulent 
dire avec trois mots ce qu'ils pouvaient dire avec trois lettres. On 
ne fera point de difficulte d'attaquer mais, et je ne sais si si 
demeurera en surete. 

But his greatest merit is as a writer of vers de societe — a genre of 
which he really established the vogue. He revived what was 
best in the lighter lyric vein — for example, the rondeau — and 
he made these shorter forms the perfect vehicle of grace and 
distinction. His charming Sonnet a Uranie, with its time-old 
hyperbole — 

Je benis mon martyre, et content de mourir, 
Je n'ose murmurer contre sa tyrannie, 

had the honor of rallying a group of partisans, the Uranists, 
during the Fronde; while Mme de Rambouillet 's praises, but 
hardly her traits, survive in the following madrigal from 

his pen: 

Jamais Tceil du soleil 
Ne vit rien de pareil, 
Ni si plein de delice, 
Rien si digne d'amour, 
Si ce ne fut le jour 
Que naquit Arthenice. 

Among Voiture's rivals and followers were Benserade, whose 
sonnet on Job was preferred to that on Uranie; Boisrobert, the 
favorite of Richelieu; Maleville, another sonneteer; and 
Sarrasin, a clever writer of ballades and of prose. Yet none of 
these could surpass the exquisite gallantry of Voiture. 

While polite society was thus cultivating manners, a smaller 
group, known officially as les doctes, was busy at codifying the 
The rules of art. At first the meetings were secret. 

Academy They began in 1626 when various literary men 
roup formed the habit of dropping in on Valentin 

Conrart, a wealthy Parisian, for the exchange of ideas. The 
group included Gombault, a minor dramatist, Godeau, bishop 
of Vence and known to the precieux world as the Mage de Sidon, 



THE FRENCH ACADEMY 227 

and the critic Chapelain. In 1629 Richelieu proposed the 
formation of a formal body for the pursuit of literature. This 
plan was finally accepted, and the new society took the simple and 
effective name of VAcademie frangaise — in imitation, more or 
less, of the various Academies then nourishing in Italy. 

The first meeting of the Academy was in March, 1634, 
although Parliament, jealous of its own prerogatives, waited 
until 1637 before granting a charter. From the very start the 
membership of the organization was limited to forty, and in 
1640 Patru introduced the custom of receiving a new member 
with a discours. The members themselves also propounded 
various topics; thus Chapelain spoke against " love," Gombault 
discussed the still more elusive matter of the Je ne sais quoi, 
and, lastly, Chapelain proposed the excellent idea of making 
a Dictionary and of compiling a Grammar, a Rhetoric and a 
Poetic Art. 

The Dictionary alone saw the light, though not until 1694, the 
date of the first edition. The work had been entrusted to 
Claude Favre de Vaugelas (1585-1650), a native of Savoy and 
the author in 1647 of the excellent Remarques sur la langue 
frangaise. Vaugelas followed Malherbe in declaring for a 
purified form of French, based on " usage." But unlike Malherbe, 
he meant by usage the speech of the court and of " the best 
authors of the time." So that again the tendency was toward 
aristocratic norms and a neglect of the every-day French of the 
people. In fact, the Dictionary urged the elimination of 
" les vieux mots," " mots nouvellement inventes," " les termes 
d'emportement et qui blessent la pudeur," as well as the 
technical words once dear to Ronsard. This severity, however, 
did not pass unnoticed. As early as 1650 Menage — the 
grammarian — launched a witty satire, which began: 

A nos seigneurs academiques, 
Nos seigneurs les hypercritiques, 
Souverains arbitres des mots, 
Doctes faiseurs d'avant-propos, 
Cardinal-historiographes. 

And Furetiere, driven from the Academy because of his indepen- 
dence, found in Holland an asylum for a Dictionary of his own, 
published after his death in 1690. Moreover, Vaugelas 



228 SOCIAL FORM AND THE SALON WRITERS 

himself — with all his prestige — did not live to complete his 
own work: he died insolvent, and his unfinished manuscript 
was among the papers seized by his creditors. Nevertheless, 
when the Dictionary was restored to the Academy it was 
completed along the lines Vaugelas had laid down. Only in the 
fourth edition is the " language of the people " considered, to- 
gether with various words taken from the " arts and sciences." 
In general, then, the role of the Academy has been reactionary 
from the beginning. Even in the seventeenth century such 
illustrious names as Descartes, Pascal and Moliere are lacking on 
its roster. Preserver of tradition, the Academy has often been 
fifty years behind the times. But this conservatism has lent 
weight to its pronouncements. Time and again its definitions 
have been invoked to solve knotty questions, even in diplomacy, 
and amid the changing policies and politics of France the 
Academy has been the guardian of the best French culture. 
The oft-cited witticism on the Academicians: 

lis sont quarante, mais ils ont de Fesprit comme quatre 

is brilliant but unjust. 

Academic in criticism, Jean Chapelain (1595-1674) was 

thoroughly so in poetry. An eclectic as to culture, he lacked 

„. , : the inspiration and the talent to be creative. His 
Lnapelam . . 

long-heralded epic, La Pucelle — on the theme of 

Joan of Arc — appeared in 1656, and although it met with a 

succes d'estime among people like Mme de Longueville, even she 

admitted that it was a bore. But while we may admit with 

Boileau that Chapelain is a mediocre poet, as a critic he had an 

important share in formulating the Classical doctrine. He wrote 

an ode on Richelieu which ingratiated him in the latter's favor. 

In 1632 he even became secretary to Louis XIII. It was by virtue 

of the esteem he enjoyed that he wielded his influence on the 

Academy and that he moulded the Sentiments sur le Cid in a 

way not to be unfavorable to Corneille. His Letters, though 

without literary merit, are valuable in reconstructing the details 

of his time. Finally, his library, rich in Italian works, contained 

the treatise of Castelvetro on Aristotle's Poetics from which the 

" rules " of the drama were to be derived ; but of this, more in 

a subsequent chapter. Between Malherbe and Boileau the 

notable name in criticism is that of Chapelain. 



CHAPTER II 
HONORE D'URFE AND THE ROMANESQUE 

The devotees of " society," however, craved other outlets 
of expression than the quips and conceits of Mme de 
Rambouillet's circle. They had youth and imagination, and 
they sought a larger canvas for the portrayal of their ideals than 
the framework of the salon permitted. This they found in a 
revival of prose fiction, which leads us back momentarily to the 
sixteenth century. 

The barber in Cervantes' immortal work proclaims the Amadis 
de Gaula — the Spanish version of which appeared in 1508 — 
"the best of its kind in the chivalric line," and so it remains 
until long after the time we are considering. In 1540 d'Herberay 
des Essarts translated the Amadis into French. Although the 
supernatural agencies of the story did not appeal to its Gallic 
admirers, the purely chivalric adventures, the love-making and 
the tone of courtesy it breathed struck upon sympathetic ears. 
Another work that stimulated the portrayal of adventure in the 
service of love was the Greek tale of Theagenes and Chariclea, 
translated in 1549 by the able hand of Amyot. But again it was 
Italian influence, coming this time through Spain, that gave the 
real start to a revival of French fiction. Throughout the 
sixteenth century the pastoral romance had flourished in Italy, 
notably in forms modeled upon Sannazzaro's Arcadia. So that 
when in 1607 Honor e d'Urfe undertook to adapt to French sur- 
roundings the Diana Enamorada of Montemayor, itself an adap- 
tation of Sannazzaro's work, the ground was prepared and the 
times were ready for such an attempt. Since love is " the desire 
for immortality in beauty," * it follows (so argued d'Urfe) 
that loving is to seek the person worthy of this ideal. This 
quest, minutely pursued, is the theme of the thirty and more 
episodes, with their seven pairs of lovers, of d'Urfe's Astree. 

1 See Plato's Symposium, § 207. 
229 



230 HONORE D'URFE AND THE ROMANESQUE 

Chance placed the birth of Honore d'Urfe (1568-1625) in the 
busy port of Marseilles, whither his mother had gone on a visit. 
D'Urfe's ^ s rea ^ nome an ^ the Arcadian scene of his story- 
Life was the county of Forez, near Lyons. Here the 
d'Urfes had lived for centuries and here Honore, fresh from 
the College de Tournon in 1585, spent the most peaceful and 
enjoyable years of his life. Thirty years later he sentimentally 
reflects on these haunts of his boyhood: 

Belle et agreable riviere de Lignon, sur les bords de laquelle j'ai 
passe si heureusement mon enfance et la plus tendre partie de ma 
premiere jeunesse ... a Tomb re de tes arbres feuillus et a la 
fraicheur de tes belles eaux, quand rinnocence de mon age me lais- 
sait jouir de moi-meme, et me permettait de gc-uter en repos les 
bonheurs et les felicites que le ciel . . . repandait sur le bien- 
heureux pays que tu arroses de tes claires et vives ondes. 

From this peaceful retreat Honore was torn by the civil wars 
in France. He joined the party of the Leaguers, was twice 
thrown into prison by his adversaries, and finally retired to 
Annecy in Savoy and devoted himself to literature. A notable 
fact is that he is thus a contemporary and compatriot of Saint 
Francois de Sales. Besides his great romance, he wrote a pastoral 
poem named, after its hero, Sereine (1600-1604), and an un- 
finished heroic on the House of Savoy, La Savoysiade. Of the 
Astree, Honore actually wrote three volumes, the first of which 
appeared in 1607, with a dedication to Henry IV. 2 But so 
great was their success that he planned at least a fourth, which 
was published a year before Honore's death through the efforts 
of his niece and his secretary, Baro. This was followed in 1626 
by two additional spurious volumes, appearing over the name of 
Borstel, Sieur de Gaubertin. 

The charm of the Astree lies in the reality of its setting and 
the nobility of its sentiment. Its characters are the virtuosi 

"At - " of the P astoral > won to a life of P eace and franklv 
in disguise. All are courtly, adepts in conversa- 
tion, if need be, poets. The events are staged in Merovingian 
times, on the banks of the Lignon. Celadon has been in love for 
three years with Astree; but Alcippe, father of Celadon, is a 
Capulet, and the lovers arrange that Celadon shall feign devotion 

2 The third volume, dedicated to Louis XIII, appeared in 1619., 



THE ASTREE 231 

to another shepherdess. Misunderstanding ensues: Astree scorn- 
fully banishes Celadon from her presence, and the unhappy 
youth seeks death in the waters of the Lignon. Rescued by 
nymphs, he escapes the amorous pursuit of Galatee, their 
princess, and finds refuge in a cave, near which he raises bowers 
to his beloved, also a temple of leaves, where are inscribed the 
Twelve Laws of Love. Celadon then places in the hand of the 
sleeping Silvandre a letter to Astree, who infers that it is 
Celadon's wraith who is writing. At last, the Druid Ademas 
brings together Astree and her lover, now disguised as the fair 
Alexis, daughter of Ademas. The consequence is that Astree 
loves the supposed Alexis. A second banishment ensues. 
Celadon in despair offers his body to the lions of the Fountain 
of Love, but they refuse to prey on so true a lover, and the 
work closes with a grand reunion, in which Celadon and Astree, 
Silvandre and Diane, the light-hearted Hylas who refuses to 
believe in the constancy of love, all take part. 

Into this framework are woven the " affairs " of many other 
lovers, each with his particular traverse, as well as considerable 
warlike adventure and much edifying discussion of Vhonneste 
amitie or gallantry. Thus, Ademas explains to Celadon the 
genesis of love in Neo-Platonic terms: 

Toute beaute procede de cette souveraine bonte que nous appe- 
lons Dieu, et c'est un rayon qui s'elance de lui sur toutes choses 
creees. 

We learn that lovers attract one another like magnets, and that 
thus joined, their souls mount to the pure essence of all loving. 
But the real expositor of this theme is Silvandre, the model of 
fidelity, just as Hylas, the inconstant shepherd, is the foil to the 
extravagances of others. Indeed, there is a peculiar irony in the 
fact that d'Urfe has made* Hylas, a Provengal, the voice of 
Gallic common sense. Hylas, to whom inconstancy was an 
article of faith, seems the master-creation of this idyll; and one 
can picture the delight with which some of Mme de Rambouillet's 
frequenters read the passages in which Hylas' raillery brings 
back to earth his nympholept companions. If the heroic 
romance of the century derives from the Astree, its counter- 
part — the roman comique — may well have taken hints from 
d'Urfe's mocking shepherd. 



232 HONORE D'URFE AND THE ROMANESQUE 

But it would be easy to exaggerate the merits of d'Urfe's 
work. The Italian pastoral is a poetic fiction consistently 
maintained. D'Urfe's attempt to make it a lesson-book in 
which the crude would learn good manners, and above all, the 
mixture of the heroic with the idyllic, jar on the modern reader 
as infractions of good taste. Granted that the period rather than 
d'Urfe is responsible for the blemishes in the Astree, it is yet true 
that d'Urfe's tendency to treat the sentimentalizings of his 
characters as important moral truths needs but the confrontation 
with a Montaigne or a Du Vair to show how vaporous his idea is. 
D'Urfe has the suavity of Saint Francois de Sales, but he lacks 
the latter's underlying strength, and successful as the Astree was, 
it should not be forgotten that the author and his public were 
both enamored of panache — that quality which Rostand wittily 
denned as " a delicate refusal to take life seriously." 

On the other hand, d'Urfe has considerable descriptive power 
(the Astree still was a favorite with Rousseau) , a marked sense 
of distinction, charm of style, and the ability to render courtly 
traits effectively. All this made for the vogue of his romance 
during the first half of the century. The Astree supplied endless 
themes of conversation to the salons. It was a veritable mine 
for plots and characters of the drama; a year before the Cid 
a troupe of actors still advertised plays by Du Ryer, Scudery 
and Mairet, as containing " subjects borrowed from the Astree." 
Particularly, it committed the novel in France to an analysis of 
sentiment, and in its union of a pastoral with a pseudo-historical 
setting, it laid the foundation for numerous romances that were 
to follow in its wake. 

The first of these is La Carithee (1621) by Marin le Roy, Sieur 
de Gomberville (1600-1674). This is a pale reflection of the 
Historical Astree, with scarcely more history than the Roman 
Romances name of Germanicus, its hero. But the same author's 
Polexandre (5 vols., 1629-1637) replaces the pastoral by the full- 
blown heroic, developed amid exotic surroundings, which gave the 
work an immense success. The principal scene of this romance is 
the Canary Islands, where the heroine Alcidiane is protected by a 
shore that disappears from view as the mariner approaches it. 
To win this inaccessible bride Polexandre goes through inextri- 
cable adventures with Turks, Moroccans, Portuguese and 



HISTORICAL ROMANCES 233 

Spaniards; he patiently listens to a whole course on Mexican 
history by Zelmatide, heir to the Empire of the Incas; and he 
himself becomes Prince of the Isle of the Sun, to which gorgeous 
ships bear gifts. Wild and extravagant as Gomberville is, he 
has an eye for color, and his fantasies on America found favor 
with a generation to whom the New World was the land of 
marvels and of gold. 

If Polexandre is French in background, Desmarets' Ariane 
(2 vols., 1632), which excels through its brevity, transports us 
to the Rome of Nero. It contains the usual love intrigue, inter- 
woven with the burning of the city and a number of unlikely 
adventures, until the hero Melinte weds the sumptuous Ariane. 
But Desmarets, known also by his successful comedy, Lcs 
Visionnaires, has a direct style, which graces particularly the 
numerous letters and oracles with which his tale abounds. 

The historical subject was now to the fore; Corneille was 
exploiting it in the drama, when the Gascon, Gautier Coste de 
La Calpre- l a Calprenede (1609-1663), began staging it mag- 
nede nificently in his romance Cassandre (10 vols., 1642- 

1645) . This work was soon followed by the still more elaborate 
Cleopdtre and Faramond ou I'Histoire de France, each in twelve 
volumes. 3 La Calprenede also wrote tragedies, but he owed 
his reputation to his romances, which continued to be read 
in England until Richardson's Pamela destroyed their hold 
in the eighteenth century. What distinguishes La Calprenede 
is the adroit handling of long narrative. His works abound in 
" oracles," "letters," descriptions of tournaments and disguises. 
The author plunges in medias res and develops his characters 
through narrative which is given either by themselves or by 
subordinate personages. One feature, the " literary portrait," 
found in previous romances, is elaborated. But the main trait 
is that the plot moves rapidly on, uncloyed by long-spun dis- 
quisitions on love; also the Oriental setting is deftly unfolded, 
and the separate episodes have point and direction. All this 
was a great gain, aside from the fact that the names of La 
Calprenede's heroines were soon on all lips and that " fier comme 
Artaban " — one of his heroes — has become proverbial in 
French. 

1 The last five volumes of Faramond are by a continuator, Vaumoriere. 



234 HONORE D'URFE AND THE ROMANESQUE 

Still Oriental and Roman, though contemporary in their refer- 
ence to actual figures and events of the day, are the works of 
The Madeleine de Scudery (1608-1701), with whom her 

Scuderys brother George collaborated, at least in name. With 
these authors, the sentimental romance reached its greatest 
popularity, which was destroyed only by the combined satire of 
Moliere and Boileau. 

The Scuderys, brother and sister, were from Normandy. 
George early entered the army, but resigned in 1630 and began 
cultivating the dramatic muse. As we shall see, he took a 
leading part in the Quarrel of the Cid, and like many contempo- 
raries he tried his hand on an epic, Alaric, which had the honor of 
making Boileau very angry. His position in the world gave him 
the entree to the Hotel de Rambouillet. Hither he led his sister 
(about 1639), and two years later they published their first 
romance, Ibrahim ou Vlllustre Bassa, the scene of which is laid 
in Constantinople under Soliman II. In 1649-1653 their joint 
labors resulted in the ten parts of the celebrated Artamene ou le 
Grand Cyrus. Here, beneath the thin veil of the Persian war, 
the entire aristocratic world — from the Grand Conde (Cyrus) 
to Voiture (Aristhee) and Chapelain (Callicrate) — found 
itself reflected in detailed " portraits." The stir that this work 
produced can be imagined. Tallemant des Reaux affirms that 
a key to the romance was in circulation ; and we may be sure that 
more than one key was used. Meanwhile, however, Madeleine de 
Scudery had begun her own samedis, where precieux gallantry 
rose to melodramatic proportions in the form of maps and indices 
of sentiment, like the well-known Carte de Tendre in Clelie 
and the so-called Conversations galantes. Once more, it is a 
question of whether it is sweeter to be loved than to love, of 
love via friendship, of absence as a cure to love, and so on. 

The Scuderys' third romance, Clelie, histoire romaine (10 vols., 
1654-1660), plants these flowers of preciosity on Roman 
soil and surrounds them with the noisy atmosphere of the Fronde. 
Clelie is the daughter of a noble Roman, Clelius, whose family 
Tarquin has compelled to fly from Rome to Carthage. On the 
voyage thither Clelius' own son is lost and in his place Aronce, 
son of Porsenna, is rescued and later brought up with Clelie, 
who of course becomes the lady of his choice. Then follow 



REALISTIC ROMANCES 235 

various adventures and rivalries. Clelie has other suitors for 
her hand — among them the tyrant Tarquin himself, a conspi- 
racy is formed against Tarquin by Brutus, and this patriot's 
history is narrated in detail. Finally, Porsenna, in obedience 
to an oracle, deserts Tarquin and allows his son, Aronce, to 
marry Clelie, while Tarquin retreats to Cumae. But the 
interest of the work lies in the " conversations " and the 
twenty-seven or more " portraits," including such notabilities as 
Louis XIV, Fouquet, Mile de Scudery herself, the Duchess of 
Longueville, Ninon de Lenclos and Scarron — in short, most of 
the social set of the age. In Clelie the long-winded heroic 
romance attains its summit, and fortunately its term. 

Thus, differing from La Calprenede mainly in the systematic 
use of the disguised character, Mile de Scudery supplies the 
sociology with which to judge the grand siecle in its making. 
Her works offer an opportunity to the historian which Victor 
Cousin (La Societe frangaise) has not failed to seize. Outside 
of the idealized " portrait," however, they contain little that 
common sense and art could approve, and the ridicule that they 
evoked came near destroying the genre they represent. Luckily, 
Mme de La Fayette rescued the novel for Classicism by substi- 
tuting psychology for heroics in her Princesse de Cleves, but 
Mme de La Fayette was a follower not of the Scuderys but of 
Corneille (Ch. IV). As for the sentimental novel, Moliere 
derided it in his Precieuses ridicules, and Boileau sounded its 
death-knell when in Les Heros de roman (1664), a Lucianic dia- 
logue, he marched the heroes of the romances down to Hades, 
to be cast into Lethe. 

Such reaction and satire, however, were not new. As early as 
1622, Charles Sorel (1602-1674), obviously inspired by Spanish 
The Realistic works, began his Histoire corrdque de Francion, 
Types a t a ] e f picaresque character, in which such writers 

as Malherbe, Racan and Balzac appear in disguise. Five years 
later he published Le Berger extravagant, where in the manner 
of Cervantes he recounts the mishaps of a young Parisian whose 
mind has been upset by reading the Astree. Amid the latter's 
pastoral ravings is placed an attack on all fiction, both prose 
and verse. The work, which was extremely popular, is also 
directed against the pompous and precieux style. But the weak 



236 HONORE D'URFE AND THE ROMANESQUE 

side of Sorel is his pedantry. His wit is too obvious, his ar- 
raignment too sweeping, and he lacks the realistic and sympa- 
thetic insight for which the Don Quixote is immortal. A similar 
fault, that of pettiness, attaches to the Roman bourgeois (1666) 
of Antoine Furetiere (1620-1688), the friend of Moliere and 
Racine. Here the types are Parisian bourgeois; Sorel himself 
figures among them, and precieux society comes in for its due, 
Mile de Scudery (Polymathie) being extolled for her wit but 
derided for her ugliness. A telling stroke of Furetiere 's is the 
tariff of prices he gives for the insertion of a character in a 
romance. As satire, the Roman bourgeois is the most graphic 
account the century produced of the foibles of the middle class, 
however inferior it may be as art to Moliere's Bourgeois gentil- 
homme. 

The novelist of the period in whom realism does approach art 
is Paul Scarron (1610-1660). Hopelessly deformed and bent 
by disease, Scarron, in spite of his loose morals, had an inflexible 
spirit which evidently won him the affection of the remarkable 
lady he married: Francoise d'Aubigne, granddaughter of the 
Protestant poet, and later, as Mme de Maintenon, the most 
influential woman in France. Scarron had a turn for the 
burlesque, which he manifests in his plays and also in his 
Virgile travesti, a vulgar satire on the epics of his day that he 
should have allowed to die by their own dead weight. His one 
noteworthy feat was Le Roman comique (1651), the history of a 
strolling troup of comedians, thought by some critics to be 
Moliere's. Here we have not only types but genuine characters, 
individualized in their proper setting and possessing the imprint 
of actuality. The narrative is short and sprightly, and its vigor 
contrasts sharply with the sugary tone of La Calprenede and 
the Scudery s. 

It must be apparent from the foregoing survey that the French 
novel of the seventeenth century does not stand for that 
The observance of rule and order toward which French 

Romanesque, literature as a whole was moving. The reasons for 
in enera ^. g ^ Q dear. In the first place, the romance was 
not an Aristotelian or Horatian form. Thus there were no 
classical rules to follow; and as for the influence of the late 
Greek romances, their tendency was entirely in favor of the dif- 



THE ROMANESQUE 237 

fuseness and complicated intrigue that one observes in the Amadis 
and the Astree. In the second place, those Italian critics who 
treated the romance were careful to note its distinctive, modern 
character, as not bound by form but as open to the imagination 
in search of the new and adventurous. Lastly, feudalism itself, 
the survival of Arthurian themes in Ariosto, Tasso and the 
Amadis, as well as the printing in the sixteenth century of many 
Old French romances, are factors that served, each in its way, 
to further the revival of prose fiction. 

However, the Age of Louis XIII was romantic, if not emo- 
tionally in the modern sense, at least, intellectual^ or ration- 
ally. The salons with their extravagances, their cult of Spanish 
and Italian mannerisms, their dabbling with the je ne sais quoi, 
their naive desire to see themselves " portrayed " ideally, illus- 
trate this fact. In the field of politics the Wars of the Fronde 
exemplify it again: it was the toying with politics rather than 
any systematic attempt at revolution that made the Frondeurs 
such easy victims to the, astuteness of a Richelieu or a Mazarin. 
It was these intellectual vagaries, impelled by a laudable desire 
to excel and be brilliant, that inspired seventeenth-century 
romance. Rostand has revived the spirit of the time in his 
Cyrano de Bergerac, which brings back not only the relatively 
obscure author of the Etats et empire de la lune but also the 
whole epoch of his life (1619-1655), with its buoyancy, its af- 
fectations, its humor and its heroism. 

" Moi, c'est moralement que j'ai mes elegances," 

says Cyrano in the play. This is not yet the grandeur d'ame 
of a Cornelian hero, but an approach to it. The truth is that 
with all its faults the romanesque always possesses a moral 
element of generosity and distinction. As a literary form, 
however, the sentimental novel of the period failed because it 
lacked the necessary curbs, both from within and from without. 
These it was finally to acquire from the drama, and thus 
seventeenth -century fiction excels only in the single instance 
of La Princesse de Cleves (see Book IV, Ch. I) . 



CHAPTER III 
THE DRAMA PREVIOUS TO CORNEILLE 

The Edict of 1548, by which Parliament established the 
Confrerie de la Passion in control of the Parisian stage (Bk. I), 
had relegated the mysteres sacres to the provinces. Such plays 
of medieval inspiration as survived in the capital assumed a 
secular, classical form, which — as we shall see — was often 
more apparent than real. In 1578 the Confrerie itself, unable 
to change with the changing world, took professional actors into 
its pay; and finally it rented the Hotel de Bourgogne to 
outside troupes of actors. In 1583 its boards were occupied by 
Italian players, the Gelosi, famous for their portrayal of the 
so-called Improvised Comedy or Commedia delV arte; and these 
were followed in 1599 by the Comediens frangais ordinaires du roi, 
a strolling troupe which under the leadership of Valleran 
Lecomte had won favor at court. It was to compete with this 
troupe that the actor Mondory opened a second Parisian theater, 
in the quarter of the Marais, in 1628. But the Confrerie was 
not easily dispossessed; clinging to the proprietorship of the 
Hotel de Bourgogne, it interfered in theatrical affairs until 
in 1676 Louis XIV, annoyed at its meddling, dissolved the 
corporation. 

Within these dates (1548-1676) came the rise and development 
of French Classical drama. 

In considering its origins it is important to keep two facts in 
mind. First, in the sixteenth century the French shared with 
the rest of Europe the view that the drama is " an exposition of 
emotion, of misery or joy " rather than " a conflict of wills in the 
form of action." Secondly, it is less from tragedy or comedy 
thus conceived that the Classical drama descends, than from a 
hybrid form, called tragi-comedy, as developed by Gamier and 
Hardy, and as perfected by Corneille. Tragi-comedy is the real 
link between the medieval theater, with its multiplex stage- 

238 



RENAISSANCE TRAGEDY 239 

setting, and the plays of Moliere and Racine. Thus we can 
distinguish two preliminary periods: (1) 1548-1600 — the period 
when France, together with other countries, is striving to pro- 
duce a type of expository lyrical drama; and (2) 1600-1636 — 
the period when the more popular tragi-comedy is definitely 
established and then (1628), through the influence of the 
unities, is transformed into the Classical forms of tragedy and 
comedy. 

The Renaissance had inherited the name " tragedy " from the 
medieval grammarians. A tragedy was any plot, whether 
The Renais- drama or not, that ended in bloodshed and horror: 
sance Type " Injustices que Ton raconte es tragedies," said 
o rage y ]sjj co i as Oresme. But the concept that tragedy is a 
dramatic representation of human misery is Senecan. In this 
respect the Italians again anticipated their northern neighbors, 
the first vernacular drama on a Senecan model being the 
Sophonisba of Trissino in 1515. Italian actors and stage-settings 
were popular at the court of Francis I; and in 1548 Sebillet 
(see Bk. II, Ch. I) said in his Art poetique: 

La moralite frangoise represente en quelquechose la tragedie 
grecque ou latine, singulierement en ce qu'elle traite sujets graves 
et principaux. Et si le Frangois s'estoit range a ce, que la fin de 
la moralite fust toujours triste et douloureuse, la moralite seroit 
tragedie. 

Greek influence was added to Senecan by the translations of 
Lazare de Bai'f from Euripides and Sophocles, and with the same 
insistence on the tragic ending, for Bai'f defines as follows: 

Tragedie est une moralite composee des grandes calamitez, meur- 
tres et adversitez survenus aux nobles et excellents personnages 
com me . . . (Edipus qui se creva les yeux apres qu'il lui fust 
declare comme il avoit eu des enfants de sa propre mere, apres 
avoir tue son pere. 

Thus, it is clear that when, after 1548, the French began writing 
tragedies of their own the underlying concept was lyric rather 
than dramatic ; the chief element of the plot was the denouement ; 
and the subject invariably was the misfortune which befalls 
several souls or the misfortunes which befall one soul. A typical 
model was the Hecuba of Euripides, of which there were four 



240 THE DRAMA PREVIOUS TO CORNEILLE 

translations besides innumerable editions. Here the audience 
delighted in the spectacle of a queen who has become a slave, a 
wife who witnesses her husband's death, a mother who sees her 
son and daughter perish; three calamities overwhelming a noble 
and virtuous character. And the best example in all literature of 
this lyrical form of tragedy is Shakespeare's King Lear, where, 
with characteristic lack of poetic justice, the destruction of Lear 
carries with it the just and the unjust to a terrible end. It is 
needless to say that no lyrical tragedy written in France is com- 
parable to this masterpiece. 

The main difference between Renaissance tragedy and the 
old moralite therefore was one of form — granting the adoption 
also of the Greek or Latin subject. The plot was now divided 
into acts instead of journees, to agree with Horace ; the occasions 
for lyrical verse were increased through the use of monologues, 
descriptions and choruses, modeled on the ancients; above all, 
attention was given to stylistic expression, and when a tragedy 
was acted — though few sixteenth-century tragedies were — an 
elaborate Renaissance setting was the rule. Obviously, such 
plays had but little action, since the victim, and not the agent 
of the drama, was the main character in the plot. 

Most of the above traits appear in the first French tragedy, 
Cleopdtre captive, by Etienne Jodelle (1552). Here the action 
begins only after the death of Antony. In the first act the 
ghost of the murdered Roman recounts the story of his tragic 
love, Cleopatra discusses with her attendants a dream she has 
had, and the chorus dilates upon the inconstancy of fortune. 
In the second act Octavius deliberates on the fate reserved for 
the Egyptian queen. The agony of Cleopatra is then the sub- 
ject of the third and fourth acts, which are followed by a reci- 
tal of her death. In the entire play there is but one real epi- 
sode (that of Seleucus), the work being an endless elegy on an 
inevitable death. Unfortunately, Jodelle for all his association 
with the Pleiade was an inferior poet, and rare are the lines in 
which beauty of expression redeems paucity of incident and 
action. Yet there is imagination in the words in which Cleopatra 
envisages Antony's love: 

Ha! l'orgueil et les ris, la perle detrempee, 
La delicate vie effeminant ses forces, 
Estoient de nos malheurs les subtiles amorces. 



RENAISSANCE TRAGEDY 241 

Jodelle's tragedy was played before the court at the Hotel 
de Reims. In 1560 Jacques Grevin's La Mort de Cesar was 
performed at the College de Beauvais. Republican Rome was 
a favorite subject with the Renaissance, and Grevin followed the 
general outlines of a Latin tragedy on Caesar by Muret. Being 
a superior poet, he infused the well-ordered original with warmth 
and idealism. Mark Antony, with the toga of the dead Caesar 
in his hands, is not yet the Shakespearean spellbinder, but his 
plea for the rights of conquest over against the rights of the 
people, as set forth by Cassius, is dramatic in concept and 
expression. There is, in fact, in the clash of Grevin's lines an 
occasional approach to the rhetoric of Corneille: 

Cesar 

C'est peu d'avoir vaincu puisqu'il faut vivre en doute. 

Antoine 

Mais s'en peut-il trouver un qui ne vous redoute? 

Better than either of the plays mentioned is Saiil le furieux by 
Jean de la Taille, in 1562. Like Grevin, La Taille was a Protes- 
tant with a classical education; but he had greater knowledge 
of dramatic technique. When his tragedy appeared in print 
(1572), it was preceded by a treatise on the Art de la tragedie 
in which the dramatic unities are borrowed from the Italian 
work of Castelvetro (see below) . The theme of Saul is the man 
crushed by fate. Saul, who had been the instrument of the 
Divine will, now becomes its victim. But his spirit, struggling 
with doubt, open revolt and heroic despair, remains uncon- 
quered in the face of death. Meeting destruction at the head 
of his troops, he says: 

Je ne veux, abaissant ma haute majeste, 

Eviter le trepas qui predit m'a este; 

Je veux done vaillamment mourir pour ma patrie; 

Je veux acquerir gloire en vendant cher ma vie. 

The play closes on this note of moral grandeur, which is the 
more firmly conceived inasmuch as the opposing fate is God 
Himself. 

Thus Biblical and Graeco-Roman themes alternate as the 
subjects of tragedy. A trilogy by Louis Desmasures — a friend 
of the Pleiade — covers the life of King David: David combat- 



242 THE DRAMA PREVIOUS TO CORNEILLE 

tant, David triomphant and David fugitif (1566). By the early- 
age of eighteen Jacques de la Taille (a brother of Jean) had 
composed a Daire and an Alexandre. But the most prolific, and 
in general the most original, dramatist of the age was Robert 
Gamier (1535-1601). 

Of Gamier 's six classical tragedies, the Hippolyte (1573) is 
the most interesting because it continues the tradition of Seneca. 
Robert Far from anticipating Racine, Garnier makes 

Gamier Phaedra die of love, not remorse, and lets her find 

in death the union with Hippolytus. Thus the lyrical strain is 
strong in Garnier, and death crowns Phaedra's passion with a 
halo of glory: 

Mes pensers ne sont plus d'amoureuse detresse, 
Je n'ai rien de lascif qui votre ame reblesse — 

is the final reflection of this chastened heroine. On the other 
hand, as Faguet has shown, Garnier's Les Juives (1580) is 
the Athalie of the sixteenth century. Elegiacal by nature and 
hence slow in action, this Biblical tragedy is yet powerful in 
dramatic suspense. The plot is the story of Zedekiah, King of 
Judea, overwhelmed by the cruelty of Nebuchadnezzar. The 
first act reveals the situation: the life of the King and his city 
are threatened; the chorus of Jews bewails the oncoming doom. 
In the second, an appeal to the conqueror's wife gives new hope. 
In the third, Nebuchadnezzar veils his grim purpose in obscure 
language. The fourth shows the family of Zedekiah, imprisoned, 
but trustful as to their final release. In the fifth, the blow falls 
as from a clear sky: Zedekiah 's children are murdered, his high- 
priest is beheaded, and he himself is blinded. 

Garnier's style lacks richness, but his motivation is well-knit 
and his characters stand out as individuals. With his tragi- 
comedy Bradamante — his most original work — we shall deal 
in another place. As for his verse, it often has the harmony of 
the Pleiade. How Ronsardian he can be appears in such lines 
as these, from the chorus of Hippolyte: 

Faisons, 6 mes compagnes, 
Retentir les montagnes 
Et les rochers secrets 
De nos regrets! 



MONTCHRETIEN 243 

In Gamier, lyrical tragedy had reached its apogee; with An- 
toine de Montchretien (1575-1621) it had a final 
flare before its extinction in the seventeenth century. 
Montchretien's life was full of incident, with which the sen- 
tentious rhetoric of his writings is in sharp contrast. Son of an 
apothecary of Falaise, left an orphan and robbed of his patri- 
mony in youth, he made his way as a servant, won back his 
estate and became embroiled in duels. In 1605 he was in Eng- 
land. There his tragedy, UEcossaise, on the subject of Mary 
Stuart, won the approbation of James I, who effected his return 
to France. He then engaged in the manufacture of steel. But 
he agitated against Louis XIII, joined the recalcitrant Protes- 
tants and was shot down with several of his followers. He left 
considerable lyric and some epic poetry, six tragedies and a 
bergerie. 

Of the dramas the Biblical tragedy, Aman ou la vanite, and the 
aforenamed UEcossaise ou le desastre are the best. But they are 
good only in their lyrical qualities: a smooth and elegant dic- 
tion and an abundant imagery which is all too harmonious. 
" What is man? " asks Montchretien: 

Une fleur passagere 
Que la chaleur flestrit ou que le vent fait choir, 
Une vaine fumee, ou une ombre legere, 
Que Ton voit au matin, qu'on ne voit plus au soir. 

His Aman has five acts; Racine, a far greater poet, found in 
the same subject material for only three. The first two acts of 
UEcossaise are composed of rhetorical speeches, ending in the 
death-sentence pronounced by Queen Elizabeth; the next two 
contain the expostulations and prayers of the victim; and the 
last act is the recital of Mary's execution. Thus, Montchretien 
closes a type of tragedy which lacked the vigor and originality 
to make it blossom into life. It was not, as a type, suited to the 
French sense of clarity and poetic justice. Moreover, those 
Frenchmen who essayed it were not of the first rank. 

As regards comedy,- the failure of the sixteenth century was 

even greater than in tragedy. " Comedy, " said the best comic 

Renaissance writer of the time, " shows dexterity of the mind," 

and a comedy writer who is merely dexterous is not 



244 THE DRAMA PREVIOUS TO CORNEILLE 

apt to be true to life. This misconception, however, was not 
due to inadequate models. By 1539 the plays of Terence had 
almost all been translated into French. In 1567 Baif gave a 
clever rendering of the Miles gloriosus of Plautus. The types of 
Italian comedy of intrigue, the commedia dell'arte, were gaining 
rapid and lasting recognition: we shall see how Moliere learned 
from them. That curious medley of genres, the Spanish Celes* 
Una, went through five translations. Nevertheless, the French 
were neither first-class imitators of foreign wares nor wielders 
of a successful comedy of their own. 

Thus Jodelle's Eugene (1552) is a farce dressed up in classical 
costume. It is divided into regular acts and scenes, and some of 
the characters have a gravity of tone that is not unlike the later 
bourgeois drama or drame. But the pointed satire of the 
wealthy and dissolute priest, Eugene, is farcical in concept with- 
out achieving the light and frolicsome spirit of the medieval 
genre. A similar wavering spoils the effect of Jacques Grevin's 
La Tresoriere, although the same author's Les Ebahis (1561) 
has the merit of ridiculing Italian affectation in the character 
of Pantalone — himself a favorite comedy type — and of 
realistically portraying the dotard in love. In imitation of 
the Italians, Jean de la Taille's Les Corrivaux (about 1563) and 
Odet de Turnebe's Les Contents (1584) employ prose instead of 
eight-syllable verse. The latter play is also noted for its sprightly 
dialogue and its clever delineation of the " nurse/' another 
popular Renaissance type. Lastly, the best sixteenth -century 
comedy in French is a direct adaptation from the Italian; 
namely, Larivey's " Ghosts " or Les Esprits. 

A descendant of the Florentine publishers Giunti, whose name 
he Gallicized, Larivey was a cleric of Troyes who mingled re- 
ligion with a bent for the burlesque and licentious. 
Although his Six premieres comedies facetieuses in 
prose (1549) were never performed, Larivey had an eye for 
the dramatic and knew the French equivalents for Italian 
roguery and picaresque phrase. Les Esprits, based on Lorenzino's 
Aridosio, has fewer characters than its original, but these 
are well drawn, and in particular the third act — with the 
conjuring of the " ghosts " by M. Josse, sorcerer, and the delud- 
ing of Ruffin, the importunate creditor — develops excellent 



ALEXANDRE HARDY 245 

farce. As late as 1611 Larivey published other comedies, none 
of which reach the high level of the earlier group. It should be 
noted that Moliere read Larivey with profit. 

A position between tragedy and comedy was given by the 
Renaissance to the dramatized bergerie or pastorale. As the last 
The Pas- name indicates, the chief features of this genre are 
torale ^ e disguise of the characters as shepherds and the 

idyllic, Arcadian setting made fashionable by Sannazzaro. The 
traits in question appear first in a comedy called Les Ombres 
(1566), by Filleul. The translation of Tasso's Aminta and 
Guarini's Pastor Fido thereupon increased the vogue of such 
idealized portraiture, especially among the aristocratic. But it 
was not until after 1600 that Hardy made the pastorale a distinct 
genre by separating it from the leading dramatic form of his 
time, tragi-comedy. 

The striking thing about Hardy is his timeliness. He came at 
a moment when the theater needed a practical person to guide 
Alexandre it: one who was not primarily a poet or a theorist 
TnS and ^ut a playwright trained to the stage and the ro- 
comedy manesque taste of the theater-going public. This 

role Alexandre Hardy (1570-1632) was eminently qualified to 
fill. Employed by the comedians of Valleran Lecomte as a 
sort of poete a gages, Hardy slaved to supply them with a reper- 
tory, at first in the provinces and then in Paris at the Hotel 
de Bourgogne. That his output does not rank high as literature 
is not surprising — particularly when we consider that he pro- 
duced hundreds of plays, of which only eleven tragedies, twenty- 
five tragi- comedies and five pastorales were ever published. 
Lanson thinks he scented the importance, without being able to 
realize it, of psychological action, and queries whether Hardy 
had not read Montaigne. Certainly he knew, besides much 
miscellaneous literature, the Astree with its elaborate love 
analyses. 

In the main, Hardy followed the lead of Gamier and pushed 
the drama toward a freer and yet firmer issue. The tragedies, 
with which he apparently began, retain the Renaissance feature 
of a long denouement: in La mort oV Alexandre, Alexander drinks 
poison early in the play, thus leaving two full acts for a dis- 
play of his suffering. But Hardy innovated even in tragedy, 



246 THE DRAMA PREVIOUS TO CORNEILLE 

from a practical point of view: he eventually gives up the chorus, 
increases the number of characters and strives in every way to 
set the action before the eyes of the spectator. The result is a 
fortified unity of action. In Coriolan the question is, Shall 
Rome or Coriolanus be the victim of ingratitude? But this 
strengthening is coupled with a disregard for the unities of place 
and time. Thus Hardy's tendency was toward a form of the 
drame litre, and in view of the stage setting of the Hotel de 
Bourgogne, which represented several localities at once, he next 
turned to tragi-comedy. 

This genre had arisen out of the detritus of the medieval 
stage. The name " tragi-comedy " alone is classic, Plautus hav- 
ing used it to designate a comic plot containing characters of 
high rank (gods and kings) . In 1545, however, the Italian critic 
Giraldi applied the term to a tragic plot with a happy ending, 
and with this usage the sixteenth century fell in. Indeed, after 
1552 the name was employed for any play of medieval origin 
which possessed " a happy denouement and at least a partly 
classical form " (Lancaster) — so that not only the miracle 
but also the mystere and the farce came thus to be disguised. 
When, therefore, the generation of 1600 became enamored of the 
romanesque (Ch. II), it was the non-historic, romanesque plot 
for which tragi-comedy was used. In Hardy the genre is vir- 
tually a dramatized novel. 

Here again Hardy takes his departure from Gamier, whose 
Bradamante (1850) was the best model to follow. Borrowed 
from the Orlando Furioso — and it is noteworthy that Gamier 
drew directly on a " romance " — the subject of this play is the 
marriage of Roger and Bradamante. Charlemagne had decreed 
that the latter should marry the man who could conquer her in 
combat. Roger wins the contest but in behalf of Leon, who had 
previously saved Roger's life ; an appeal is then made to the Em- 
peror, who declares that the matter shall be decided by a duel 
between the rivals. Leon now discovers Roger's identity and, 
rather than oppose him, magnanimously gives up Bradamante. 
The double marriage of Roger and Bradamante and Leon 
with Charlemagne's own daughter then brings the play to 
an end. 

How closely Hardy adopted Garnier's technique can be seen 



ALEXANDRE HARDY 247 

from his Gesippe ou les deux amis and his Elmire ou I'heureuse 
bigamie. Both plays are novelistic in origin, Gesippe being a 
tale of Boccaccio's, and Elmire the well-known Legend of the 
Count of Gleichen. Both deal with a love-affair; both disregard 
the unities; and both end happily. Thus Hardy brought the 
stage into active cooperation with contemporary taste, and won 
for the drama what it had previously lacked; namely, popular 
support. His style is undistinguished, his attempts to imitate 
Ronsard often absurd, and his lack of probability startling; 
but his drama has action and he enormously enriched its sources 
of material. From Amyot's Theagene et Chariclee he drew 
eight plays of five acts each; La Force du sang and La belle 
Egyptienne are dramatized novelas of Cervantes; Phraate is 
taken from Giraldi Cinthio, and so forth. Finally, Hardy made 
the pastorale a distinct genre by giving it a completely bucolic 
atmosphere (no chivalry, no royal personages) and a light, 
bantering tone, in ten-syllable verse. 

In short, it was Hardy's achievement to reconcile stage- 
craft and dramatic art, and to set up tragi-comedy as a 
point of departure for future experimentation. It is significant 
that Schelandre's Tyr et Sidon, a tragedy in 1608, is transformed 
into a tragi-comedy in 1628 and is preceded by the words of 
Ogier : 

That to separate the comic and tragic elements in the same 
play is to ignore the condition of men's fives, of whom the days 
and hours are often intermingled with laughter and tears, with 
contentment and affliction, according as they are moved by good 
or evil fortune. 

This sounds like the practical creed of Shakespeare. More es- 
pecially it voices the opinions of De Laudun, whose Art poetique 
(1598) had argued against the unities, and of Lope de Vega, 
whose Arte nuevo de hacer comedias (1609) was having its 
effect in France by the side of Spanish subjects and models. 

The period from 1628 to the appearance of the Cid (1636) is 
marked by unusual productivity, considerable quibbling as to 

dramatic principles and the final establishment of 
Irregulars . 

the unities. In this struggle the court and the 

public were on one side; on the other were the theorists led by 

Chapelain and Richelieu, and known as les doctes. 



248 THE DRAMA PREVIOUS TO CORNEILLE 

At first Hardy's irregularity was all the rage. The leading 
dramatists, Rotrou, Du Ryer and Scudery, all wrote tragi- 
comedies; and the more romanesque the subject the better. As 
late as 1639 it was by means of a tragi-comedy 1 that Scudery 
tried to silence the Cid; whereas Rotrou's Occasions per dues 
(1633) added the direct imitation of the Spanish comedia to that 
of the novel. There was, in fact, scarcely a dramatic freedom 
(blank verse, prose, murders on the stage) that did not find 
some defender in France. 

Nevertheless, the generation of Malherbe was now in the 

saddle. The Hotel de Bourgogne might favor the romanesque 

drama; the friends of rule and order had the offi- 
Regulars 

cial world on their side, and when the Theatre du 

Mairais opened its doors (1628) it did so for a presentation of 
their wares. The spokesman of this movement, Jean de Mairet 
(1604-1686), lacked genius but he heeded the critics, who, to- 
gether with the followers of the Marquise de Rambouillet, 
pushed him to the front. 

As early as his Chryseide et Arimant (1625), a tragi-comedy, 
Mairet had shown a tendency toward unity of plot. In 1631 he 
published Silvanire, another tragi-comedy, with a preface on 
the unities which emphasized two points: (1) the subject of a 
tragedy must be known and hence grounded in history, and 
(2) the law of verisimilitude must be observed — and he adduced 
the example of the Italians and the ancients. Finally, in 1635 
he put forth the first concrete example of such a tragedy in 
his Sophonisbe. The expense lavished on the performance, 
marked by the use of special scenery and " crystal chandeliers " 
was equalled only by the enthusiasm with which the Hotel de 
Rambouillet welcomed the play. Dramatically speaking, how- 
ever, there was little to recommend it — except that it was 
superior to Mirame, a " regular " tragedy by Richelieu and one 
of his favorites, Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin. 
The Three Meantime, the main critical factor in the struggle 

Unities f or « regularity " was Castelvetro's version of Aris- 

totle's Poetics (1570) , a copy of which was in Chapelain's library. 

1 L' Amour tirannigue, praised highly by Balzac. Scudery was constantly passing 
from one dramatic camp to the other. 



THE DRAMATIC UNITIES 249 

Castelvetro supplied the technique, for which Scaliger {Poetics, 
1561) had outlined the theory, that led to the triumph of the 
dramatic unities. 

From Aristotle, Scaliger deduced the fundamental ideas that 
each literary genre has its discoverable norm and that the drama 
in particular should approach as closely as possible to the por- 
trayal of actual truth. The spectator, he thought, should be 
moved by the actions of the play exactly as if they were those of 
historical reality. This interpretation of verisimilitude or 
vraisemblance — which is quite opposed to Aristotle's own idea 
of " poetic truth " — is fundamental in French Classicism. What 
made it so is that Castelvetro based the technique of the drama 
entirely upon stage representation. Since the stage is a cir- 
cumscribed space, he argued, it follows that the action must 
be limited in time to the period spent by the spectators in the 
theater. Thus, out of Aristotle's unity of action and his obser- 
vation that " tragedy endeavors, so far as possible, to confine 
itself to a single revolution of the sun," there arose the fixed 
unities of time, place and action. It is evident why after a 
lapse of some fifty years Chapelain should have advocated them 
anew, about 1630. The stage area of the Hotel de Bourgogne 
was restricted, yet the multiplex stage-setting forced the actor 
into that part of the background in which the action was located. 
Not only verisimilitude but common sense demanded a simpli- 
fication: this the unities gave. 

But the drama suffered thereby in picturesqueness ; and despite 
Chapelain many authors refused to sacrifice le beau sujet to the 
rules. How Corneille found a solution of this difficulty by mak- 
ing the drama psychological — through the substitution of 
the external action by an inner one, often in defiance of verisi- 
militude — the ensuing chapter will show. 

In the main, Chapelain won the day: the Abbe d'Aubignac's 
Pratique du theatre (1640-1657) proclaimed the sacred nature 
of the rules ; they became part of the " decorum " of the drama at 
the very moment when kings and lovers alike were condemned 
to observe the forms of polite society. The unities did not sup- 
press the emotions; on the contrary, they made their expression 
intense. Thus the French drama attained that concentration 
which it alone has. This last step is the achievement of Racine. 



250 THE DRAMA PREVIOUS TO CORNEILLE 

As to criticism, the final attitude of Classicism is found in the 
words of Boileau: 

Un rimeur, sans peril, dela les Pyrenees, 
Sur la scene en un jour rassemble des annees. 

Mais nous, que la raison a ses regies engage, 
Nous voulons qu'avec art Taction se menage; 
Qu'en un lieu, qu'en un jour, un seul jait accompli 
Tienne jusqu'a la fin le theatre rempli. 



CHAPTER IV 
PIERRE CORNEILLE 

Pierre Corneille, surnamed the Great, " non-seulement," said 
Voltaire, " pour le distinguer de son frere mais du reste des 
hommes," was by origin and disposition a Norman. The poet 
rejoices at the fact in one of his early plays. He was born in 
Rouen, in 1606, as son of a barrister who by dint of long and 
faithful service came to be made a noble ; indeed, in the very year 
that his son produced the Cid. The eldest of six children, Pierre 
was first educated at a Jesuit school, where he twice won prizes 
for excellence in Latin verse, and then he studied law. But he 
made little use of his legal training until, in 1628, he purchased 
the offices of attorney-general in the " department of waters and 
forests " and " of harbors." This double duty he fulfilled con- 
scientiously for over twenty years, returning from Paris to 
Rouen as occasion required. Public documents show him as 
" investigating " an illegal sale of wood made by the Duke of 
Orleans and as " defending " the ship-builders of Havre against 
the pilots of Rouen. Thus in reality the law was Corneille's pro- 
fession; the theater his avocation. In addition, Corneille was a 
church-warden in 1652 and kept the accounts of his parish. 
Another singular post for a great dramatic poet. 

But poetry, especially the drama, was the ruling interest of his 
long and fruitful life. Tradition affirms that his first play, 
Melite (1629), embodies a love affair of his youth: an attach- 
ment he had formed for a certain Catherine Hue who in 1637 
became Mme du Pont. Certain it is that Melite, performed in 
Paris by Mondory at the opening of the Theatre du Marads, 
was a success, and that Corneille had found a public for his pro- 
ductions. At a stroke, he had won all hearts by the simplicity 
and grace with which he had presented the rather common- 
place theme of the girl who prefers charm to riches in her suitors. 
From now on, Corneille was a constant visitor to the capital and 

251 



252 PIERRE CORNEILLE 

a regular producer of plays. So well had he succeeded that in 
1633 he ventured to boast: " few are my equals in the drama and 
none surpass me." This he states in a Latin poem declining an 
invitation to welcome in verse the visit of Louis XIII and Riche- 
lieu to Forges-les-eaux near Rouen. But apparently the Cardi- 
nal did not resent the refusal, for in 1635 we find Corneille 
among the five collaborators on Richelieu's Comedie des 
Tuileries. A year later he rose to fame with the tragi-comedy 
of the Cid. 

But the Cid also provoked opposition. Corneille's rivals in 
the drama were Mairet and Scudery; the fact that Mondory's 
troupe had won such a triumph aroused their irritation, which 
broke loose against our poet when in some verses entitled Excuse 
a Ariste he flagrantly said: " I owe to myself alone all my re- 
nown." Such vainglory could not be brooked, and after some 
preliminary skirmishes Scudery published his Observations sur 
le Cid, the main points of which were that the play violates 
the " dramatic rules " and that the subject is worthless and stolen 
from the Spanish. At length the matter was submitted to the 
newly formed Academy for a decision; this body demurred, pre- 
sented an opinion largely the work of Chapelain, and then in 
1637 issued the well-known Sentiments upholding Scudery on 
the ground of verisimilitude but lauding Corneille for 

la force et la delicatesse de plusieurs de ses pensees et cet agre- 
ment inexplicable qui se mele dans tous ses defauts. 

For the nonce the rivals seemed to have scored. Corneille's 
pride was hurt; how deeply it is impossible to say. It is known 
that in 1639 he paid Chapelain a visit. At all events, after three 
years, spent partly in Rouen, whither business and family cares 
had called him, Corneille produced Horace. Here was a tragedy 
according to the " rules," on a historical Roman subject, glori- 
fying patriotism — a combination sure to please Richelieu. 
Corneille had found the type of " moral " tragedy in which not 
only he but also his successors were to excel. 

Shortly after the appearance of Cinna in 1640 Corneille mar- 
ried Marie de Lamperiere, a lady belonging to the same noblesse 
de robe or legal gentry as himself. He was now in the plenitude 
of his powers as a dramatic poet. With that mixture of self- 



CORNEILLE'S LIFE 253 

assurance and bourgeois timidity which was peculiarly his, he 
alternately mingled with the gay life of the capital and kept a 
watchful eye on his interests in Rouen — writing verses for the 
Guirlande de Julie, exchanging visits with men of letters, or ex- 
ercising the sedate and exacting duties of a provincial magistrate. 
In 1647 he was elected to the Academy, five years after Riche- 
lieu's death, and after twice having seen others preferred to 
himself. Then came the failure of his tragedy Pertharite (1652) 
and his retirement to Rouen, where he remained seven years, 
devoting himself mainly to a verse translation of the Imitation 
of Christ. 

His return to the theater followed a performance of Moliere's 
troupe in Rouen toward Easter, 1658. The irresistible charm of 
one of the actresses, Mile du Pare — then in her prime — doubt- 
less rekindled Corneille's enthusiasm for the stage. This and 
the fact that at the instance of Pellisson his pension had recently 
been renewed led Corneille to reappear on the boards with 
(Edipe. Other plays followed, but his hold on the public was 
only for a time. A second failure awaited him in Attila, 1667. 

Meantime Corneille had published his plays in a three-volume 
edition (1660) together with explanatory prefaces, the Examens, 
and three essays on dramatic art — the latter in reply to the 
critical Pratique du theatre of the Abbe d'Aubignac (Ch. III). 
Moreover, he had the courage, in the admirable prologue of his 
Toison d'or, to warn Louis XIV against the dangers of his im- 
perialistic policy: 

Ah! Victoire, pour fils n'ai-je que des soldats? 

A vaincre tant de fois mes forces s'affaiblissent; 
L'Etat est florissant, mais les peuples gemissent; 
Leurs membres decharnes courbent sous mes hauts faits, 
Et la gloire du trone accable les sujets. 

But later on this critical note disappears entirely from Cor- 
neille's works and the Roi-Soleil is lauded to the skies. 

The chief embitterment of this later period was the rising fame 
of Racine. Boursault, who to be sure was no friend of Racine's, 
depicts Corneille for us, alone in his box, gloomy and sulking, 
at the first performance of Britannicus (1669). A year later the 
two poets are brought into active competition on the stage with 



254 PIERRE CORNEILLE 

the subject of Berenice, which Fontenelle — Corneille's biog- 
rapher — avers was given them independently by Henrietta of 
England, the sister-in-law of Louis XIV. However that may 
be, Corneille's Tite et Berenice, performed exactly eight days 
after Racine's great tragedy, was a distinct failure. Corneille 
still had his partisans; Mme de Sevigne was one of them; but it 
is abundantly clear that neither his gifts nor his method 
were able to vie with the genius of Racine in treating 
such a subject. Obviously he had outlived his day. The world- 
empire of Louis XIV was not romanesque but real; its dramas 
were externally unheroic in order to be internally the more in- 
tense — just as the spirit of comedy had ceased to be sentimental 
and had become actual and mordant, striking at the foundations 
of the society which Corneille had so gloriously idealized. Val- 
iantly, it must be said, the old poet struggled on. He had long 
since moved to Paris and was sharing his home with his less 
gifted but suaver younger brother, Thomas Corneille, who was 
also writing for the stage. He even tried the Racinian manner — 
he who in his prime had essayed every dramatic expression — but 
in vain; the collapse of Surena in 1674 forced him into definite 
retirement. The last years of his life were clouded by sorrows, 
personal and domestic. An occasional poem addressed to the 
King alone reminds us that he was still among the living. At 
last the end came ; in 1682 he finished the labor of half a century 
with a final revision of his works, and two years later his proud 
but shattered spirit was at rest. He was buried at Paris in the 
church of Saint-Roch. His brother Thomas succeeded him in the 
Academy, and Racine — now living in retirement himself — pro- 
nounced a eulogy which for critical insight and beauty of diction 
is one of the noteworthy documents of that august body. 

Corneille's career as a dramatist thus falls into three distinct 
periods. 

The first, the period of preparation, begins with M elite. This 
comedy, written practically without rules or models, was 
Corneille's followed by a trial of tragi-comedy in Clitandre. 
Dramas Then came four additional comedies, interrupted 

by the Senecan tragedy Medee and eclipsed by the Cid. 
These early comedies, however, are far from being second- 
rate. It was something to have swept away the conven- 



THE CID 255 

tional comedy types of Rome and Italy, with their intrigues, 
disguises, concealments of sex and the like, and to have 
gone directly after " life." It was even more to the poet's 
credit that the figures with which he replaced them are 
true to the courtly world of Louis XIII. In the Place 
Royale and the Galerie du Palais he shows the places this 
society frequented: the shops and bookstalls where they made 
their purchases and waged the warfare of youth and love. If 
their speech is precieux, it represents that part of Paris brought 
up on the Astree. A creation of Corneille's is the suivante or 
soubrette who replaces the nurse of earlier comedy. Thus the 
first plays of Corneille approach the sentimental comedy of the 
later dramatist Marivaux: in La Veuve — the best of them — 
a trickster is caught in his own trap and the situation is deftly 
and delicately handled. On the other hand, Ulllusion comique 
is a boisterous fantasy on a Spanish model, a type of comedy 
that the poet was to perfect in Le Menteur (1643). 

The Cid (1636) begins for Corneille, as well as for France, 
the period of dramatic masterpieces. Now indeed " the sun had 
arisen and the stars might retire," as Scudery had said on an 
earlier occasion. Everyone knows that Corneille's play is in- 
debted to the Mocedades del Cid, by the Spanish dramatist 
Guillen de Castro. But Corneille shifted the interest from the 
outer world of incident to the inner world of psychology — the- 
truly French world — and thereby created a new type of action. 
Formally the Cid may be a tragi-comedy with a romanesque 
subject and a happy ending, yet intrinsically it is the first French 
tragedy. The youthful Chimene loves the youthful Rodrigue, 
not for himself, but because of his heroism; and to merit his 
heroism she herself becomes heroic. 

" Tu n'as fait le devoir que d'un homme de bien, 
Mais aussi, le faisant, tu m'as appris le mien," 

says Chimene to the lover whom fate has made the slayer of her 
father. If love triumphs in this play, it is yet true that in the 
intellectualized atmosphere which these characters breathe in- 
dividual impulse must always submit to public duty. The Cid 
is a tragedy inasmuch as it involves this renunciation, over and 
over again. Contrary to the Spanish, Corneille's characters are 



256 PIERRE CORNEILLE 

contending forces of will, impulse, pride and duty — and the 
greatest of these is duty. Compare Romeo and Juliet and you 
will note in the treatment of a similar situation the gulf that 
divides not only two poets but two civilizations. 

With his next two plays, Horace and Cinna (both 1640), 
Corneille chose subjects better suited to illustrate his theme. Both 
plays deal with Roman history, both are termed " tragedies " 
and observe the unities. The combat between the Horatii and 
the Curiatii is turned into a mental conflict because the two 
families are bound by marriage and love: Horace, more patriot 
than lover, wins out, whereas Curiace, less heroic but more 
human, dies in battle — leaving his beloved to be slain by her 
own brother, Horace, for cursing his patriotism. In Cinna the 
main struggle occurs in the mind of Augustus, swaying between 
magnanimity and vengeance as regards the conspirators against 
his life, and choosing magnanimity, as Prospero does in the 
Tempest — but with more rhetorical emphasis: 

Je suis maitre de moi comme de l'univers, 
Je le suis, je veux l'etre. 

In Polyeucte (1642 or 1643) Corneille carries the theme of duty 
into the field of religion. The Christian martyr, Polyeucte, has 
a Roman wife whom duty teaches to love her husband, and 
finally as a Christian convert to win others to his cause. In 
all this there is an overstrain, a tendency to carry the victory of 
the human will to an extreme, to produce " admiration " rather 
than pity and fear, as is generally the case in tragedy. Yet in 
the four plays mentioned we see the genius of Corneille at its 
best. Enamored of spiritual strength in the service of society, 
he had portrayed it under the guise of family, country, monarchy 
and religion, in original and enduring dramatic form. 

The winter of 1643 brought another tragedy, La Mort de 
Pompee, in which the stoicism of the dead Pompey is the 
energizing force of the characters in the play, and then follows 
Le Menteur — Corneille's most distinguished comedy. Again 
the subject is borrowed from the Spanish; this time a more or 
less free adaptation of Alarcon's La Verdad Sospechosa. 
Dorante, the victim of the comedy, is not so much a liar as 
a prey to his inborn bent for romancing. His lies are thus a 



LATER DRAMAS 257 

continuous extravaganza — lightly and gayly expressed, yet in a 
style remarkable for its fitness and measure. Corneille could 
not resist writing a Suite du Menteur, which besides having the 
defects of a sequel shows that his return to comedy was only a 
digression. The extraordinary or exceptional was henceforth 
his field, but seriously and even solemnly conceived, and tending 
more and more to melodrama as time went on. 

Rodogune (1645) was Corneille's own favorite and over a cen- 
tury later called forth the special criticism of Lessing. Only the 
strictest attention, it is true, will enable the spectator to follow 
the complicated motivation of the first four acts of this 
tragedy — never did Corneille " invent " more — but the fifth act 
in which the Medea-like heroine, Cleopatre, stands revealed has 
some of the majestic terror of ancient tragedy. And like an 
idyll, in the midst of so much horror, Corneille has set the 
fraternal love of Cleopatre's two sons, both in love with 
Rodogune, their mother's rival, yet each longing to sacrifice 
himself for the other. Once more only, in Nicomede, is 
Corneille able to attain the grandiose; but this play is properly 
a tragi-comedy and adds little to Corneille's previous achieve- 
ments. Andromede, a spectacle-play set to music, and Don 
Sanche d'Aragon, in some respects the prototype of the romantic 
drama of 1830, are evidence of his undiminished versatility as 
a playwright. However, his inspiration is waning, and as 
we enter upon his third and last period this fact is all too 
apparent. 

(Edipe, brought out in 1659 at the request of Fouquet, 
Louis XIVs notorious Chancellor of the Exchequer, is a strange 
misconception of this epic character coupled with a protest — 
placed in the mouth of Theseus — in behalf of free-will. 
Stranger still is the fact that the love affair with which Corneille 
tried to embellish it gave the play great popularity during the 
second part of the seventeenth century. Politics — the raison 
d'Etat — becomes the obsession in these last plays. As early 
as Horace, Camille, when speaking of the gods, had said: 

lis descendent bien moins dans de si bas etages 
Que dans Tame des rois, leurs vivantes images, 
De qui Tindependente et sainte autorite 
Est un rayon secret de leur divinite. 



258 PIERRE CORNEILLE 

The Marechal de Grammont is supposed to have called Othon 
(1664) "the breviary of kings." Certainly the exaltation of 
the monarchy, in the Machiavellian sense, never rose higher than 
in the maxim of this play that: 

Tous les crimes d'Etat qu'on fait pour la couronne, 
Le ciel nous en absout, alors qu'il nous la donne. 

Thus Othon, Pulcherie, Sertorius, are rhetorical, financially 
perhaps profitable to Corneille, but evoking the opprobrium of 
Boileau and Bossuet. " God," said the latter, " sends kings to 
His Law to learn their duties." Such, as we said, is the fate of 
a genius who has outlived his time, although personally the poet 
never compels our admiration more than when he haughtily 
admits the truth in the lines, addressed to Louis himself: 

C'est le dernier eclat d'un feu pret a s'eteindre; 
Sur le point d'expirer il tache d'eblouir 
Et ne frappe les yeux que pour s'evanouir. 

As Brunetiere makes clear, Corneille's sense of style remained 
unimpaired to the end. 

Corneille, therefore, belongs definitely to the Pre-Classical 
Period: the age of the romanesque. His dramas, which 
Point of bristle with the word vertu, are like a long- 
view and drawn-out page of Balzac's Discours sur le 
summary ^^ 

II estime [says Balzac] plus un jour employe a la Vertu, qu'une 
longue vie delicieuse; un moment de gloire qu'un siecle de Volupte 
. . . Rome etait la boutique, ou les dons du ciel etaient mis 
en ceuvre. . . . Elle a su meler, comme il faut, Fart avec 
Paventure; la conduite avec la fureur; la qualite divine de Fintel- 
ligence dans les actions brutales de la partie irascible. 

Three propositions that fit Corneille to the dot. It has been 
claimed that his characters are modeled on real life: Richelieu, 
Retz, Turenne, being heroic in the Cornelian sense. But this 
is merely to say that in his quest of life he sought the 
exceptional. His was an age of action, of strength, of rapid 
and simple decisions; when men were struggling to realize an 
ideal, and intelligence and will-power were in the ascendency. 
Of such a view of humanity the dramas of Corneille are the 
quintessence: in their constant appeal to the reason, ir their 



LITERARY QUALITIES 259 

over-emphasis on the will, in their complex yet swift-moving 
plots, and in the crashing rhetoric of their style ; nay even in the 
vanities, the preciosity and the pettifogging they contain. 

Having said this, there remains that inexplicable thing called 
" genius," which no amount of background can even partially 
explain. Corneille took the irregular drama of the age of Hardy 
and gave it content and form. In comedy, which he made 
presentable to a cultured audience, he shows, in a joyous rather 
than a critical mood, the extravagances to which human nature 
is liable and the foibles to which it succumbs. Le Menteur has 
none of the trenchant ridicule of the later Moliere, but it also 
lacks the cruel pessimism of that observer of men. In lyrical 
tragedy Corneille could emulate Seneca, but his Medee remains 
an emulation, little else. What made tragi-comedy his medium 
is that his genius was romantic, but romantic in an unusual 
and very definite sense. His muse was the Reason, not my 
reason or yours, but the " socialized reason " which was the 
peculiarly French contribution to the Renaissance. Imaginative 
as he was, Corneille saw its possibilities, and lawyer-like he 
states them as only a lawyer could: bereft of their accessories 
but with " an intensity of intellectual precision that burns and 
blazes." Of all this the four great dramas, the Cid, Horace, 
Cinna and Polyeucte, are a continuous illustration. Each has 
a great subject, timely and yet universal — honor, patriotism, 
absolutism and martyrdom — and each problem Corneille solves 
by a victory of the deliberative will, before which all other 
considerations, no matter how human they may be, give way. 
Indeed, his failures may be explained by the fact that one cannot 
multiply such victories indefinitely and write successful plays. 

As a consequence, Corneille's characters are Neo-Platonic 
types, actuated by a superimposed rational self. They do not 
Characters succumb to Fate, they make Fate subserve their 
particular ends. The poet's interest in them may 
be psychological; they themselves are generally poor psychol- 
ogists. They understand but one thing and strive for it in a 
straight line. Horace, exasperated by his sister, justifies his 
fury with the strange words: 

" C'est trop, ma patience a la raison fait place; 
Va dedans les enfers plaindre ton Curiace." 



260 PIERRE CORNEILLE 

And the villains of Corneille's plays are similarly motivated; 

rarely, as in the case of Felix in Polyeucte, do they show any 

criminal subtlety or political astuteness. This masculine 

simplicity is of course unfavorable to the portrayal of women 

types; and, but for such notable exceptions as Camille (Horace) 

and Emilie (Cinna) , Corneille's heroines are not womanly in the 

usual sense of the word. Either, like Pauline, in Polyeucte, they 

are " obedient " to the point of mysticism, or they are furies with 

scarce a vestige of humanity, like Cleopatre in Rodogune. 

As for plot and action, Corneille's dramas stand midway 

between the loosely constructed tragi-comedies of Hardy and 

_. . _ the finished Classical product of Racine. Although 
otructur© ... 

he accepted the unities in Horace, he was never more 

than a nominal Aristotelian. Again and again, but especially in 

his Discours, he used the Italian critics to justify himself against 

Aristotle. His whole conception of drama — as of life — was 

invraisemblahle. In the preface of Heraclius he has the boldness 

to say that " le sujet d'une belle tragedie doit ne pas etre 

vraisemblable." Corneille understood as little as his critics the 

real purport of Aristotle's distinction between the truth of history 

and the, truth of poetry, and so, like Mairet before him, he tried 

to conform to the critics by treating a historical subject. While 

his plots culminate in a " crisis " — as all French Classical tragedy 

does — he constantly confuses the spectator by multiplying the 

obstacles which his heroes have to overcome, and he never quite 

succeeds in obtaining more than a conventional observance of the 

unities. The stage direction for Horace reads: 

La scene est a Rome, dans une salle de la maison d'Horace 

— this arrangement whereby the characters all meet in the same 
room being, to a large extent, casuistical. Thus, master-play- 
wright that he was, Corneille is not yet formally a Classic. 

Of the last fact, his style — that truly Cornelian style — is 
probably' the best evidence. His lofty and grandiose ideas 
have a fitting garment in his high-sounding and 
brilliant diction. Certain of his lines rise to a climax 
like a storm, and then break on the ear with a crash of sound 
unique in French poetry. Occasionally he attains a simple grace 
that is all too rare in his work, as when he writes: 



DU RYER AND ROTROU 261 

Souvent un je ne sais qu'on ne peut exprimer 
Nous surprend, nous emporte, et nous force d'aimer. 

On the other hand, Corneille often lacks taste: some of his 
lines are sublime; others are banal or unconsciously grotesque. 
Too often he is over-emphatic, merely sententious as when he 
answers one maxim with another (the well-known coupe cor- 
nelienne), and unnecessarily precieux — in short, a rhetorician. 
Further, he repeats rime-words and even entire verses. But let 
us not forget that Malherbe had placed poetry on stilts; in 
Corneille it was learning once more to soar, not in images of 
sense but in unadorned flashes of thought. The genius of Cor- 
neille must be sought in his best verse as well as in his best plays. 

Out of the oblivion into which the greatness of Corneille has 
cast his contemporaries in the drama, two names survive as 
Du Ryer possessing some of the glamour of their illustrious 
and Rotrou CO mrade. They are Pierre Du Ryer (1605-1658) 
and Jean Rotrou (1610-1650). 

Du Ryer began to write earlier than Corneille in the manner of 
Hardy. Indeed, his Cleomedon (1633) is still taken from the 
Astree, although it contains such Cornelian lines as: 

Qui conserve un sceptre est digne de l'avoir, 
and 

Qui vante ses ai'eux ne vante rien de soi 

— another proof that rhetoric was what people liked. After 
the Cid, Du Ryer took to writing tragedies. The best of these 
is Scevole (1644) , in many ways a counterpart and to some extent 
a copy of Cinna. While Du Ryer knew his audiences, whose 
emotions he echoes — especially in Alcionee, a tragedy with a 
romanesque subject — his verse lacks distinction and his talent 
was not original. 

On the other hand, Rotrou fills a niche of his own, although 
he was a great admirer and a friend of Corneille. His gifts are 
a vivid imagination — shown particularly in the range of his 
subjects — and a real sense of pathos. Thirty-five of his plays 
have come down to us, consisting of comedies, tragi-comedies 
and tragedies. He began to write young, presumably as a 
successor of Hardy, for the Hotel de Bourgogne. His first 
play was L'Hypocondriaque (about 1628), containing the motive 



262 PIERRE CORNEILLE 

of letters that are intercepted and the ensuing madness of one 
of the characters. It is possible that Corneille borrowed this 
motive for his own M elite, although it was a commonplace at 
the time. Besides borrowing from the Romans and Spaniards, 
Rotrou preceded Racine as a student of Sophocles, and while 
his version of the Antigone is not remarkable, Racine mentions 
it in one of his Examens. But his leaning was nevertheless in 
the direction of the Cornelian type of drama. 

His best tragi- comedy is Laure persecutee, where we find the 
vigorous line: 

Je veux ce que je veux, parce que je le veux; 

and his masterpiece in tragedy, Le veritable Saint-Genest (1645) , 
while partly drawn from Lope de Vega's Lo Fingido verdadero, 
recalls Polyeucte. Rotrou's tragedy represents an actor who 
in performing the martyrdom of Adrian is so carried away by 
the heroism of his role that he openly professes his faith and 
receives a martyr's crown. The play within a play — as in 
Hamlet — was a favorite device of the time; Corneille had used 
it in his Illusion comique, but Rotrou's tragedy is the best 
example of it in French. 

Rotrou wrote two other noteworthy tragedies: Venceslas 
(1647) and Cosroes (1648). The latter, which goes back to the 
same source as Heraclius, is close in situation to Nicomede. The 
former, taken from a Spanish play by Francisco de Rojas, 
exhibits Rotrou's emotional genius in a plot that would have 
pleased Corneille. Venceslas is king of Poland ; his sons are both 
in love with the same woman ; the one kills the other rashly and 
through an error; Venceslas, placed in the dilemma of passing 
judgment on his own son, abdicates in his favor. In the main 
the situation is that of Rojas, the title of whose drama is: No 
hay ser padre siendo rey; but the motivation, as well as 
the compassionate language of the characters involved, is 
Rotrou's — an indication that with more care and less haste 
he might have produced a really great drama. But Rotrou, 
in addition to being a playwright, was a public-spirited citizen 
of the little town of Dreux, whose inhabitants honored him with 
an official post. His death has a halo of glory: he died during 
an epidemic at Dreux, a victim to his sense of public duty. 



CHAPTER V 
DESCARTES 

The rational spirit of the Renaissance has its purest expression 
in Cartesianism or the philosophy of Descartes. As we have 
seen, Calvin defined the province of knowledge as limited to 
God and ourselves. Similarly, Ramus had appealed from 
scholastic philosophy to human reason, although the reason he 
had in mind was that revealed by the ancients. Finally, 
Montaigne set his own reason by the side of that of the ancients 
and, skeptical as he was in regard to both, he thereby demon- 
strated the necessity of a method of thought. It remained for 
Descartes (1) to discover the method; and (2) to show by it 
that the moderns are equal, if not superior, to the ancients. 

Thus Descartes is the founder of modern philosophic thought: 
he began where the ancients stopped, with the problem of 
cognition (" By what means do we know? ") ; he defined the 
reason scientifically {Cogito ergo sum — "I think, therefore 
I am ") ; and he opened the door to the idea of progress, so 
essential to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. 

In temperament Descartes was a survival of the sixteenth- 
century type of Frenchman. Apparently, no man was less 
social. Yet no man, certainly no philosopher, traveled about 
the world more in order to acquaint himself with the subjects 
he was to treat. He was born at La Haye, between Tours and 
Poitiers, in 1596. His family belonged to the nobility, and as a 
matter of fact Descartes was never compelled to make a living 
or do anything he did not like. Educated at the Jesuit 
college of La Fleche, he left it in 1612 thoroughly con- 
vinced of the futility of book learning but with a strong 
aptitude for mathematics. After a short stay in Paris, 
where like Pascal he developed an interest in gambling, Descartes 
took his law degree at Poitiers (1516) and then enlisted in the 
army of Maurice of Nassau in Holland, in order to gain experi- 

263 



264 DESCARTES 

ence of life. Here he wrote his first treatise, a Compendium 
musicae, which applies to music the principles of geometry, 
The Thirty Years War then led him to take service with the 
Bavarian army, and it was in 1619 that — being in winter 
quarters, " alone in a room with his stove" — the idea came to 
him of making mathematics the foundation of a universal theory 
of knowledge. 

With characteristic caution, Descartes was willing to abide 
his time. His first concern was with Nature, not with meta- 
physics. Accordingly, we find him at Prague, seeking traces of 
Tycho Brahe and of Kepler; he visits Rome and Florence in 
search of Galileo, whose astronomical views are in accord with 
his own ; in the Alps he makes observations as to avalanches and 
lightning. From 1626 to 1628 he is again in Paris, meeting 
with the men of his time and active in their discussions. At 
one of these gatherings Descartes sets forth the error of reasoning 
by syllogisms and thus wins the plaudits of the Cardinal de 
Berulle, who urges him to publish his own philosophy. 
Accordingly, Descartes definitely left France for Holland on the 
maxim that bene qui latuit, bene vixit (" he who has been well 
hid has lived well ") in order to procure the necessary philo- 
sophical repose. 

His first residence in Holland was at Franeker, where it is 
said he wrote the Meditationes de prima philosophia in 1629. 
All the while he is also busy with experiments in physics. Yet 
his chief scientific work, the Traite du monde, was never 
published as such. Hearing of the condemnation of Galileo, 
Descartes destroyed his treatise and vowed never to publish any 
of his writings. From this resolve he was fortunately shaken 
by his affection for his illegitimate child Francine. For her, the 
only human being that he really loved, he planned to issue at 
least a summary of his ideas. To this wish, more than to 
anything else, we owe the Discours de la methode, printed 
anonymously at Leyden (1637) and the first of his works to be 
published. But Francine died soon after and thus never read 
her father's " autobiography of a thought," as M. Lanson has 
cleverly named the Discours. 

Emboldened by this first adventure in print, Descartes brought 
out his Meditationes (1641), and there followed a period of 



HIS WORKS 265 

controversy in which he was as ardently defended as he was 
bitterly attacked. But among his adherents was one amiable 
and powerful person: the Princess Elizabeth, daughter of 
Frederick V, Elector Palatine. She had long been Descartes' 
favorite pupil. In 1649 he completed for her the Traite des 
passions de Fame — next to the Discours the most important 
French work that he wrote. Through Elizabeth, Descartes now 
became acquainted with Catherine, Queen of Sweden. Finding 
Holland no longer safe, he accepted Catherine's invitation to 
visit Stockholm and be her tutor. But the northern climate 
and the early hour of five in the morning, set by the Queen for 
their interviews, were too severe a drain on a constitution that 
had never been robust. Soon after his arrival Descartes fell ill 
of pneumonia and died in February, 1650. His body together 
with his unpublished manuscripts was returned to France in 
1667. But the oration prepared for Descartes' funeral was never 
pronounced; a royal order forbade it just as the Congregation 
of the Index in 1663 had forbidden the circulation of his works. 
As early as 1641, however, a Jansenist, the Due de Luynes, had 
translated the Meditationes into French. 

While Descartes' works constitute an entity in that all are 
applications of the same mathematical ideal, yet the Discours 
Works and de la methode and the Traite des passions have 
Significance particular significance for the student of literature. 
Written designedly in French for the purpose of bringing 
philosophy — or the problem of being — within the ken of les 
honnetes gens, they respectively establish the two pivots upon 
which this problem turns: (1) the truth with regard to our 
existence; and (2) the truth with regard to our conduct. Learn 
to see things rationally, says Descartes, and you will realize that 
two plus two makes four not only in theory but in fact; act on 
this principle, and error will disappear from the world. 

Of the two works in question, the Traite des passions, though 
posterior to the Discours in date, belongs essentially to the 
The "Traite Pre-Classical age. It contains the mechanics of 
des Corneille's conception of character. Not that the 

.rrlSSlOTlS 

treatise accounts for Corneille's conception, but it 
elucidates it — rationally. Descartes explains our passions on 
the basis of what he terms the " animal spirits." Being 



266 DESCARTES 

particles of blood, to which the heart communicates its heat, 
the " animal spirits," according to Descartes, are the channels 
through which the brain receives impressions of the external 
world. When excited by a stimulus from either the external 
world or the brain, they produce passion and thus influence our 
actions. It was not Descartes' fault that his knowledge of 
physiology was defective; he could not go beyond the discovery 
of Harvey on the circulation of the blood ; " qu'on me donne 
Petendu et le mouvement," he said, " et je vais faire le monde "; 
— more important is the fact .that he views the passions un- 
sentimentally as part of this " movement/' and that he views 
them as originating with the body. 

Morally, then, a passion is to be judged by its action or result, 
with which it is inextricably bound up. A passion is good or 
bad only in so far as the ensuing action is beneficial or harmful 
to mankind; and the latter question can be decided only by the 
reason. For the reason supplies the judgment with which to 
approve or condemn a passion. Thus love is good when it 
leads us to choose good things: 

pour ce que, joignant a nous de vrais biens, elle nous perfectionne 
d'autant. 

The love of Rodrigue and Chimene, Descartes would have said, 
is good inasmuch as it makes them sacrifice self to duty ; Horace 
was justified in killing Camille because his passion had the 
approval of his reason. It is clear that Descartes considers the 
reason as autonomous: no passion can sway it, and therefore 
no passion is in itself interesting or worthy of detailed description. 
To the Cartesian there are no mysteries, no obscurities, no 
shades of feeling — such as we shall find in Racine. What is 
important to him is the mind, with its faculty of judgment, 
a vicious act being invariably attributed to a false or bad 
judgment. 

But if reason, argues Descartes, is the absolute judge of good 
and evil, it yet has no power to enforce its choice between them. 
This depends on the will, which. is the faculty whereby we set one 
passion against another or with the help of the imagination evoke 
a good passion which is lying dormant. There is no stronger 
advocate of the free-will than Descartes. He summarizes: 



THE DISCOURS DE LA METHODE 267 

La volonte est tellement libre de sa nature qu'elle ne peut ja- 
mais etre contrainte . . . les actions sont absolument en son 
pouvoir (de Tame) et ne peuvent qu' indirectement etre changees 
par le corps. 

Such an extreme attitude is, as we noted above (Ch. IV), ro- 
mantic. In this respect Descartes is the child of his age, the 
Traite des passions being a complete (though probably un- 
conscious) vindication of its ideals. 

The Discours de la methode, while maintaining the dualism — 
essential to Descartes' philosophy — of thought and matter, is 
The "Dis- a ^ ar more sober piece of reasoning. Its object is 
cours de la no other than to show how Descartes arrived at a 
criterion for scientific truth, and it records the 
experience step by step for the benefit of the reader, the subtitle 
being Pour bien conduire sa raison et chercher la verite dans les 
sciences. Thus it is the method that matters in philosophy or 
science, not the conclusions, which will vary according to the 
material at hand. Herein lies the progressiveness of Cartesian- 
ism as a whole. 

Descartes begins ab ovo, by rejecting the acquired learning 
of the ages. In a memorable sentence he states that: 

le bon sens est la chose du monde la mieux partagee. 

Why not use it? since it constitutes the greatness of man. Let 
us therefore accept nothing that after examination our bon sens 
does not inevitably sanction. Under the ban of this analysis 
would fall most of the things that Descartes had learned at 
La Fleche, more especially of course scholastic philosophy. An 
apparent exception is made of mathematics and theology ; of the 
first because Descartes is convinced a priori of its value, and of 
the second because he would remain orthodox and is not concerned 
with the immortality of the soul. 

Assuming, he says, that we can doubt everything — the 
authority of the senses, the truthfulness of God, the accuracy 
of mathematics — there remains one thing that we who doubt 
cannot question; namely, that we think.. And if we think, we 
exist; hence cogito ergo sum. Upon this, the most logical of all 
propositions, the certainty of all our knowledge depends. That 
is, whatever the mind perceives clearly and distinctly must be 



268 DESCARTES 

true. The later objection of Gassendi, that thinking does not 
prove existence, that we might as well say " I walk, therefore 
I am," Descartes answered with the statement that of all our 
actions we can be certain only of the one ; namely, that we think. 

On this simple foundation Descartes proceeds to construct the 
existence of God and of the universe. 

The existence of God is capable of three proofs. The first 
is that we find the idea of God within us, and that there must be 
a primal substance behind the idea. Again, the reality of God 
may be inferred from our own imperfection, the consciousness 
of which shows our dependence on a being that is perfect. And 
thirdly, the strongest proof of God is gained from our clear and 
entire conception of Him. Just as the mind knows that in every 
triangle the three angles are equal to two right angles because 
the fact is involved in the idea of a triangle, so, says Descartes, 
existence is a necessary predicate of a perfect being. This proof, 
the so-called ontological one, of a Supreme Being, had already 
been used by Saint Anselm of Canterbury. Wherein Descartes' 
argument differs from Anselm's is the fact that actuality to 
Descartes is contained in perfection: you cannot conceive that 
a being is perfect who does not exist. 

Upon this perfect and eternal Being, Descartes then throws the 
responsibility for the external world. He is, so to speak, the 
Deus ex machina who establishes the union between our thinking 
selves and the natural world about us. God is the only complete 
substance, containing within Himself the attributes of the other 
two incomplete substances, mind and matter. Mind has as its 
attribute thought, and matter has as its attribute extension. 
God possesses both qualities; and therefore it is from Him 
that our knowledge of matter is derived. It is inconsistent 
with God's perfection to deceive us, and thus our notions of 
matter, in proportion as we think them clearly and distinctly, 
must be true. 

The style in which Descartes has propounded these ideas is 
not always of the best. His aloofness from society had kept 
him in ignorance of the contemporary worship of form. He has 
neither the delicacy of Voiture nor the eloquence of Balzac. Too 
often his sentences are involved and his thought burdens and 
chokes his phrase. Yet his expression has order and sequence, 



HIS INFLUENCE 269 

his definitions are clear and accurate, and his similes are simple 
and well chosen. His two treatises are addressed to the general 
reader ; it was an achievement to have done this with so difficult 
and abstruse a subject. With Descartes, philosophy ceases to 
occupy exclusively the learned, and supplies reading-matter also 
for the average educated person in France. He himself has 
defined such reading in the famous words : 

Une conversation avec les plus honnetes gens des siecles passes 
. . . et meme une conversation etudiee en laquelle ils ne nous 
decouvrent que les meilleures de leurs pensees. 

It must not be thought that Cartesianism won immediate or 
complete acceptance. First of all, Descartes' ideas were too 
Influence of bold, his conclusions too far-reaching, not to produce 
Descartes opposition even among those who were his partisans. 
His mechanical theory of nature, dependent only on extension and 
movement, penetrated the salons and provoked at least the 
discussion that such a novelty would. In the Femmes savantes 
Moliere ridicules the blue-stockings who revel in such Cartesian 
terms as tourbillons and mondes tombants. Mme de Sable 
and Mme de Grignan were themselves confirmed Cartesians; 
whereas Mme de Sevigne, fond of animals, objected to a 
philosopher who would deny her pets a soul, just as did La 
Fontaine, who in his Discours a Mme de la Sabliere expostulated: 

Qu'est-ce done? une montre. Et nous? e'est autre chose. 
Voici de la fagon que Descartes l'expose, 
Descartes, ce mortel dont on eut fait un dieu 
Chez les paiens. . . . 

In the second place, there was tradition: that of antiquity and 
that of the church. The current of the times was strongly set 
for a triumphal union of the two in the absolutism of Louis XIV. 
Against this current the scientific method of Cartesianism 
struggled in vain; it could at best move with it, not against it, 
and add its power to the general stream. And this it 
accomplished by giving clarity and precision to the ideas which 
Classicism was to treat; and also by insisting — more effectively 
than would otherwise have been possible — on the subordination « 
of beauty to truth: the type of rational truth which Descartes' 
had defined. Even to Pascal, who regarded Descartes as inutile 
et incertain, the dignity of man consists nevertheless in reason- 



270 DESCARTES 

ing. It was the dogmatism of the reason — the tendency of 
Cartesianism to deny the soul all other qualities but this, to make 
the existence of God Himself depend on the thinking ego — that 
brought forth the greatest opposition. 

In the field of philosophy the enemies of Descartes were the 
so-called libertins. We have met with a similar group among the 
Opponents of poets of the first quarter of the century (Bk. Ill 
Descartes CL Iy) They nQw combatted the dogmatism f 

Descartes with the skepticism of Montaigne; while not denying 
the " reason/' they questioned its unerring validity. Specifically 
they objected to the Cartesian theory of innate ideas, and 
temperamentally they had an aversion for the severity of 
Descartes' ethics, they themselves being epicureans. Bayle and 
Fontenelle continue this line of attack in the eighteenth century 
(see Part III, Bk. II). Meantime, the libertins were all those to 
whom nature — in the Rabelaisian sense of Mother Nature — 
is the safest guide in life. Guy Patin, the physician, and es- 
pecially Moliere belong to this group; whereas Pierre Gassendi 
(1592-1622), the chief philosopher of the libertins, was Moliere's 
teacher. 1 

Gassendi, who claimed to be an orthodox Christian, was a 
frank epicurean. He wrote in Latin and applied the philosophy 
of Lucretius (the atomic theory) to the domain of physics. 
This was in direct opposition to Descartes, for whose " innate 
ideas " Gassendi substituted an empiricism which made the mind 
an emanation of the body. Like the Jesuits, he held to the 
view — handed down from the Middle Ages — that " there is 
nothing in the mind which was not first in the senses." But he 
coupled this view with a rather broad eclecticism or tolerance, 
and the force of his arguments won him a large following, despite 
his unoriginality. Thus Gassendi represents the liberal current 
of the century, running counter to its idealism and dogmatism. 

But Cartesianism was to have a recrudescence during the 

M second part of the century. This was due mainly 

to Nicholas Malebranche. Born at Paris in 1638, 

Malebranche at the age of twenty-two became a member of the 

1 Other libertins were Cyrano de Bergerac, La Mothe le Vayer, Saint-Evre- 
mond, and the notorious Ninon de Lenclos of whom Mme de SeVigne said: 
'Qu'elle est dangereuse, cette Ninon!" 



MALEBRANCHE 271 

Congregation de l'Oratoire, and, being won over to the phil- 
osophy of Descartes, he enlarged its scope in the Recherche de 
la verite 2 and then applied his theory to controversial questions 
in his Traite de la Nature et de la Grace — a book that Bossuet 
criticized tersely in the words " pulchra, nova, falsa." Male- 
branche died in the heat of controversy in 1715. 

Malebranche's point of departure was Descartes' separation of 
mind and matter, and their coalescence in God. The problem 
had already disturbed his predecessor, Arnold Geulincx (1625- 
1669) , a Dutch Cartesian. Geulincx had sought the principle of 
union in what he called " occasionalism." My will is the occasion 

— he argued — whereby my body moves. It is not that my will 
moves my body, but that God who has imparted motion to 
matter has so arranged the world that my body moves when 
my will acts. This type of casuistry Malebranche expands by 
a return to Neo-Platonism. 

In this way, God not only becomes the author and cause of 
all things but it is in Him that all things have their being and 
perfection. The Deity comprises, says Malebranche, the world 
of matter as well as the archetypes (the Platonic Ideas) to which 
it is related. As to reason, God is its supreme form; and ac- 
cording as man grows intelligent he beholds the operation of 
reason in everything — in Nature, in himself and in religion. 
Reason is the logos, made visible in Christ. 

Malebranche was a mystic and a theologian. Hence, he took 
the step from which Descartes held back; namely, that of identi- 
fying theology with philosophy. His system, as such, based on 
the confusion of reason with God, was to lead straight to the 
monism of Spinoza, to whom all individual being seemed 
accidental and God alone the exclusive reality. 

On the other hand, the appeal to reason 3 as authority is the 
logical and extreme position of Cartesianism. Applied to the 
world of phenomena, reason is made the driving force of the 
eighteenth century. It destroys tradition, places the moderns — 
in their self-consciousness — above the ancients, suggests the 

* Thus in 1674 Malebranche did for Descartes what Charron had done for 
Montaigne at the close of the sixteenth century. 

3 On reason as bons sens — the practical, as distinguished from abstract, reason 

— see below, under Classicism. 



272 DESCARTES 

idea of progress and perfectibility, and in its attention to the 
sciences undermines the rule of art as incorporated in the ancients. 
On the last question, the pages of Malebranche's La verite deal- 
ing with Aristotle are significant. 

The seventeenth century, however, was more literary than 
scientific, in spite of Descartes. As Voltaire said, it was a 
century " de grands talents bien plus que de lumieres." Al- 
though the philosophy of Descartes stands at the apex of the 
Renaissance, of which it is the philosophy, we should bear in 
mind that in the seventeenth century it was merged with the 
current of Graeco-Roman tradition, as pointed out above. 
From this happy fusion came the underlying restraint of the 
Classical Spirit. 







Rigaud, "Louis XIV" 



BOOK IV 
CLASSICISM 

CHAPTER I 

LOUIS XIV AND THE CLASSICAL SPIRIT 

The reign of Louis XIV, the longest in French history, ex- 
tended from 1643 to 1715. Louis was but a child of five when 
he came to the throne, and the Queen-mother, Anne of Austria, 
continued the policy of Richelieu with the help of the astute 
but unscrupulous Mazarin. Thus the young King was bred in 
the school of the most uncompromising absolutism under the 
direction of an Italian. A " realist " in politics, Mazarin had 
but one aim: to serve himself by serving his king. In this he 
was aided by a sentimental attachment for the Queen-mother 
herself. Mazarin's greatest achievement, the Peace of West- 
phalia (1648), had made France a self-sufficient modern state. 
By the annexation of Metz and Alsace, it had indicated her 
present boundaries, and by reducing the Holy Roman Empire 
to an empty shadow it left France the leading continental power. 
Through this peace, says Lavisse, " la France a pratique . la 
premiere avec eclat la politique de Tegoisme national." Other 
nations could but follow in her wake. So that when Mazarin 
died in 1661, the framework of absolute monarchy was complete: 
the Roi-Soleil had only to step into it and supply the picture of 
his own commanding personality. Louis was not a genius. He 
was, in the common opinion of historians, more of an actor than a 
creator — in the political sense. But until the fatal Revocation 
of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 he strove wisely, on an ever as- 
cending scale, for the development of those qualities for which 
France and French culture are justly famed. In the words 
of Voltaire: " l'Etat devint un tout regulier, dont chaque ligne 
aboutit au centre." This center was the king — in art and 
literature as well as politics. Louis is the embodiment of the 

273 



274 LOUIS XIV AND THE CLASSICAL SPIRIT 

cultural ideal inherent in the Renaissance. He is the uomo di 
virtu made real. But being a realization, he is also an end. The 
year 1685 marks the pinnacle of his career. With the Quarrel of 
the Ancients and the Moderns in 1686 a new period of French 
history begins. 

Personally, Louis blended admirably the qualities of mind and 
body required for such a difficult role. He was twenty-two when 
Personal Mazarin died, and besides the charm and grace 
Traits of of youth he had a majesty of bearing which 
0U1S reflected a self-possessed but generous attitude of 

mind. " Le metier de Roi," he tells us in his Memoirs, 
" est grand, noble, delicieux." If fortune had honored him, 
he at least meant to prove worthy. Never was a king more 
industrious nor, with few exceptions, more circumspect. In 
his work of organization, it is true, he was assisted by the 
cool-headed Colbert — him whom Mme de Sevigne had 
fitly termed " le Nord." Colbert was a Cartesian and an in- 
defatigable worker; he prepared for his royal master a dossier 
on every conceivable matter: law, commerce, politics, war, and 
even literature and painting. It behooved Louis, he thought, to 
" divide up " the affairs of state and set them in their " natural 
order." Owing to Colbert the fiscal and the legal system were 
modernized, the French colonies were developed through the 
establishment of a merchant-marine, and the Canal du midi, 
connecting the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, was planned and 
in part carried out. But if Colbert proposed, it was Louis who 
" disposed " and where it was feasible executed his own orders. 
Doubtless Louis should have followed Colbert's advice and 
given his country peace; whereas, glorious as they were, his 
wars exhausted his people's strength. When Louis realized his 
mistake, Colbert was dead and the damage irreparable. On 
the other hand, Louis did not generally lack prudence. Not be- 
ing a quick thinker, he improvised nothing. His speeches — one 
might add, his every act — were prepared with care. Passion- 
ate by nature, as his successive " affairs " with Marie Mancini, 
La Valliere, Madame de Montespan and Madame de Maintenon 
show, he was in no sense a profligate and rarely allowed emotion 
to control his mind. When his own brother, the weak Duke of 
Anjou, asked him for a sinecure, he slyly replied: "the best 






VERSAILLES 275 

sinecure is the heart of your King." Thus, in the main, Louis 
was hard-working, intelligent, moderate and extraordinarily 
regular. " With a calendar and a watch in hand," wrote Saint- 
Simon, " one could at a distance of three hundred leagues pre- 
dict what he was doing." 

But it should be observed that the chief function of this 
monarch was to " act a part." Where pomp and ceremony are 
The Court of the rule, pride and vanity become a second nature. 
Louis XIV ^nd m indful of the disruptive forces that produced 
the Fronde, the monarchy bent every energy to organize its 
" glory " in a concrete form. Says Lavisse: 

Louis voulut, dans cette concupiscence de gloire . . . etre 
glorieux comme Auguste, le protecteur des lettres, comme Con- 
stantin et Theodose, les protecteurs de l'Eglise, comme Justinien, 
le legislateur. " II faut," pensait-il, " de la variete dans la gloire." 

But however varied the manifestations of glory, they were 
clearly to center upon the King. Colbert, who in 1664 bought the 
office of superintendent of buildings, virtually became a minister 
of fine arts. He awarded pensions to scholars and writers, he 
acted as vice-protector of the Academy, he gave employment to 
artists and architects — in short, he directed the intellectual 
life of the country with the same masterful design as he did the 
finances and the laws. But it was Louis himself who created 
Versailles — the focus of all this activity, the vast stage of French 
grandeur, the symbol at once of his absolutism and his uni- 
versality. 

It is unnecessary to dwell on the magnificence and cost of the 
court of Versailles. The palace, which, with its galleries, court- 
yard, park, fountains, embodied the art of Le Vau, Mansart, Le 
Notre, Le Brun and Perrault, was planned to admit a multitude 
— not as guests but as spectators and workers. Taine estimates 
that the official household of the King involved some fifteen 
thousand individuals with an outlay of forty to fifty million 
francs or one tenth of the public revenue. What concerns us 
here is the symbolic aspect of the place, the fact that human 
life could be organized on so formal a plane, that it was in effect 
possible to compress the activities of a nation into the dimensions 
of a well-ordered salon. For the Court of Versailles was not 



276 LOUIS XIV AND THE CLASSICAL SPIRIT 

an inner circle — closed to the eyes of the world — but a con- 
tinuous public function, in which every act of the monarch, from 
his getting out of bed {le lever) to his evening prayer and retire- 
ment (le coucher) was elaborately staged and observed. When, 
for example, the youthful Louis wished to proclaim his attach- 
ment for La Valliere, he gave at Versailles the " Plaisirs de 
File enchantee " — a fete that lasted nine days, and in which 
Moliere was the chief entertainer. Riding on a chariot, the 
great dramatist impersonated Pan, the most pagan of the 
gods; and he celebrated in verse the justification for Louis' 
passion: 

Dans Fage ou Ton est aimable 

Rien n'est si beau que d'aimer. 

Thus the court of Louis XIV appealed to the sociability and 
the histrionic sense of the French. It was exclusive only in the 
respect that training and genius made it so. It is noteworthy 
that the main talents of Louis' reign were of bourgeois extrac- 
tion: Racine, Boileau, Moliere and La Fontaine. Only La 
Rochefoucauld, Madame de La Fayette and Saint-Simon were of 
the hereditary noble class. Yet noble or cleric or bourgeois, 
it was part of Louis' deliberate plan to make them all contribute 
to his fame: Racine and Boileau as historiographers, Bossuet 
as chaplain to the court and as tutor to the Dauphin, 1 Moliere 
as chief entertainer and comedien du rot To ignore such a 
king was practically to forego worldly success. " Saehez," 
says one of Moliere's characters, " que les courtisans ont d'aussi 
bons yeux que d'autres; qu'on peut etre habile avec un point 
de Venise et des plumes, aussi bien qu'avec une perruque courte 
et un petit rabat uni," and finally, " que la grande epreuve . . . 
c'est le jugement de la cour." Even the vagabond La Fontaine >^ 
— as free a spirit as France has ever produced — was to recognize 
the fact. 

It would have been impossible, however, for Louis to con- 
centrate upon Versailles unless he had had the resources of Paris 

Paris: The to draw from> B ^ tne seventeentn century Paris 
Urban Aspect had become what it has remained since : the metrop- 
of Culture Q j ig with a c h arac t er and temper of its own; "the 
torch-bearer of France," as Victor Hugo has called it, but not 

1 Known as Monseigneur. 



CLASSICAL TRAITS 277 

the whole of France nor the expression of a single faith, religious, 
political or artistic. Yet if French literature has a metropolitan 
aspect, this was never more the case than during Louis' reign. 
The ancients had seen in their cities — Athens and Rome — 
the opportunity for a definite and well-rounded life of culture; 
and the French succeeded to this idea, again through the medium 
of Italy. Ronsard and Du Bellay had been proud of the fact 
that they hailed from the provinces; but the Classical Boileau 
is first and foremost a Parisian. Nicolas Poussin, the court 
painter, admits without hesitation: 

J'ai choisi la demeure de la ville, et non pas celle des champs 
ou je vivrais deconsole. 

Thus Classical culture has the two phases, summed up in the 
expression la cour et la ville, and between them it would be hard 
to choose. For if the court gave form and polish, it was the 
city that furnished matter and ideas to literature and art. 
Vaugelas, that arbiter elegantiarum in respect to language, is 
forced to grant that: 

Le consentement des bons auteurs (most of them Parisians) est 
comme le sceau, ou une verification, qui authorise le langage de 
la cour, et qui marque le bon usage. 

And so it happens that Racine, a Jansenist at heart, produces 
the most courtly form of tragedy; that Moliere, a radical in 
almost any other age, lifts his voice in behalf of the social 
virtues; and that Pascal, a dissenter if there ever was one, 
clothes his thought in the most aristocratic of styles. Variety 
in unity is therefore the hall-mark of French Classicism. It 
is without doubt a literature of form, but it is also a literature 
of great individuals, whose personal qualities are none the 
less marked for being artistically on much the same plane. 
In the alignment of Classical traits, reason would come first, 
then art, then social form, and finally nature. With all of these 
The Classical except the last we have dealt in preceding chapters. 
Traits a s we hayg seeri) the idea of reason permeates the 

Renaissance as that of faith does the Middle Ages and as the idea 
of personality characterizes modern times. In regard to art, 
its influence dates from the Pleiade and the introduction of 
critical theories from Italy. In both respects there was — as 



278 LOUIS XIV AND THE CLASSICAL SPIRIT 

we have observed — a return to Graeco-Roman antiquity; thus 
the authority of the ancients became in a measure sacrosanct. 
Yet there could be no organization without social form, which 
would harmonize conflicting ideals under the banner of decorum 
and give to~ the social body ease and grace of expression. This 
was the work of the Hotel de Rambouillet and the various salons 
arising therefrom. Lastly, as a culmination of these traits, 
came a better understanding of man's intrinsic qualities, a 
psychological grasp of his actual being — in a word, nature, which 
thus is the crowning feature of the Classical edifice. 

It cannot be too strongly stated that to the seventeenth 
century nature was primarily " human nature." The generation 
of 1660, thinks Brunetiere, was quite capable of enjoying land- 
scape; but it enjoyed it objectively, sans phrases. It was far from 
conceiving landscape, in its primitive majesty and beauty, as 
an inspiration for poetry and art. That revelation was to be 
reserved for Rousseau and the eighteenth century to make. 
Meantime, this was the age of the formalism of Le Notre, when 
the regularity of the drawing-room was the model for gardening, 
when trees and shrubbery were arranged like furniture, and lawns 
were currently called des tapis verts. In general, then, the 
fundamental idea was la belle nature; that is, " civilized nature," 
a world thought of as conforming to the universal laws of the 
human mind. The more the opposing factors of mind and matter 
could be harmonized, the better — provided always that reason 
or mind remained in the ascendency. On this basis Boileau 
laid down the rule: 

Jamais de la nature il ne faut s'ecarter; 
and, in England, Pope repeats this thought in the dictum: 

True wit is Nature to advantage dressed, 
What oft was thought but ne'er so well expressed. 

On the other hand, a departure from nature was now the precieux, 
the bizarre, the grotesque and the invraisemblable — like the 
lawless and savage aspects of a universe untouched by the 
civilizing hand of man. " Let there be no mistake," says that 
later-day Classicist Brunetiere, " if the heroes of Shakespeare 
are more passionate than others, they are not on that account 
more true to life but only more brutal " — 



CLASSICAL TRAITS 279 

ils sont plus proches de la nature dans la mesure ou le sont 
aussi les sauvages et les barbares. 

Classicism would admit of no such imperfection. 

But if Classicism is at once natural, artistic and rational — 
it is by its very definition opposed to an exaggeration of any 
one feature. The real Classicists (Pascal, Boileau, Racine, La 
Fontaine, Bossuet and Moliere) held not only to reason but 
also to intuition as the two essential qualities of man. They 
did so with Pascal, who maintained — and this is the most ex- 
treme statement of his position: 

Le cceur a ses raisons que la raison ne connait point; 

and again with Boileau, who said: 

Mais la nature est vraie, et d'abord on la sent. 

There has been much discussion of the famous passage in which 
Pascal sets in opposition these two functions of man as the 
esprit de geometrie and the esprit de finesse. By the one, he 
affirms, we reason abstractly, and by the other we apprehend 
immediately and concretely. Other terms are: la raison (the 
pure reason) and le bons sens (the practical reason). And it 
is the second quality, so frequently emphasized by both Moliere 
and Boileau, that is invoked for the guidance of mankind. Cer- 
tainly, the trait is typical of the French honnete homme, who by 
antecedent training has acquired the aptitude to judge delicately 
and therefore correctly. 2 Cleante in Tartuffe holds this point 
of view when he says: 

Les hommes la plupart sont etrangement faits! 
Dans la juste nature on ne les voit jamais. 

— whereas the man of good breeding is considerate and balanced 
in his conduct. But names are deceptive, and the esprit de 
finesse ranges all the way from le bon sens to the most delicate 
intuition. Similarly, in the field of art it appears as le bon gout 
or taste; and, again, to some critics taste is based on inflexible 
rational laws, whereas to others it is mainly delicacy of perception 

2 Measure" as characteristic of the honnite homme — a reflection of the Italian 
sprezzatura — is seen in La Rochefoucauld's maxim that "l'honn^te homme 
est celui qui ne se pique de rien." 



280 LOUIS XIV AND THE CLASSICAL SPIRIT 

or feeling. La Bruyere, who believed that there is " un bon et un 
mauvais gout," nevertheless made the criterion of taste a matter 
of cultivated instinct. 3 The important point, however, is that 
Classicism conceives of man's nature as " complete." The gesta- 
tion of centuries is achieved: man has become conscious of him- 
self, of his position in the universe, of his functions, of what he 
can and cannot do in life. If he is sensible like the Chrysaldes 
and Aristes of Moliere's Comedy, he will know that the " middle 
course " (le juste milieu) is the best, that it is folly to fly to 
extremes,* that only he is happy who can bring his life into 
accord with the lives of his fellow-men. But even when he 
is not sensible, when like the Phaedra or Orestes of Racine 
he is mad with passion, or like Pascal he is at odds with the 
universe, his reason mirrors his weakness and justifies the 
position that: 

Toute notre dignite consiste . . . en la pensee. Travaillons 
done a bien penser: voila le principe de la morale. 

In other words, Classicism clings to reason as the foundation 
of intuition, and its " nature " is the harmony between idea and 
fact. 

In this essential position, Classicism is the realism of seven- 
teenth-century literature. Racine and Moliere are related to 
Corneille as Honore de Balzac is to Victor Hugo. The difference 
is that neither Balzac nor Hugo regards man as a finality, and 
least of all as a rational finality, such as he is to both Corneille 
and Racine. The Classical world, we repeat, is a closed universe. 
Its tendency is constantly to identify the city and the world 
(in urbe et orbe). Classicism gravitates towards a center, not 
away from it. Humanity is not asked in Nietzsche's phrase, 
" to surpass itself," but to be itself. The breadth of Classicism j 
lies in the supreme fact that it considers nothing human as alien 
to it — though this is true only as an ideal. In fact, having! 
decided what is normal for man or a special group of men, the 
Classicist sets up this norm as his model and imitates it. And 
how is this norm determined? The simplest answer to this ques- 

3 "Celui qui le sent et qui l'aime a le gout parfait: celui qui le sent et qui l'aime 
en deca ou au dela a le gout defectueux." — Des duvrages de V esprit. 

* Compare Pascal, Pensees, 378: "C'est sortir de l'humanite que de sortir du 
milieu." 



CLASSICAL TRAITS 281 

tion is to say: by a comparison of civilized men throughout the 
ages; and to the seventeenth century such a comparison neces- 
sarily embraced the ancients. Thus French Classicism is not 
merely a revival of ancient classicism, but an attempt to define 
the genus Man by eliminating from him all that seemed local^ 
and ephemeral. Racine's tragedies are not Greek, Roman or 
French ; they are — within the limits we have stated — universal. 

Having said this, we must grant that there is little or no room 
in such a program for the imagination. " The fairyland of fancy," 
where genius " may wander wild," is in itself contrary to the 
Classical creed. The Classical vocabulary is restricted to words 
that were socially approved as universally expressive. 5 Even 
the rational imagination, considered as " quickness," or " wit," 
or " conceit " — qualities so much lauded in Pre-Classical days 
— had become abhorrent to the age of Boileau and La Bruyere, 
who regarded false wit as lacking in common sense and judg- j 
ment. The amiable and sensible Bouhours defines le bel esprit i 
as le bon sens qui brille. 6 In all this, Classicism again repre^ 
sents a reaction, and correctness or " decorum " easily became a 
tyranny. Above all, and here is the objector's best argument, 
Classicism would leave no illusions, no mysteries, no undis- 
covered bourns, in man's spiritual makeup. Where the momen- 
tum is towards clearness and precision it is away from lyricism 
or metaphysics. 

On the other hand, genius is always an exception and no 
system can fully explain the great work of art. Racine has a 
lyrical side just as Pascal is metaphysical, if any Frenchman 
ever was. If Classicism means anything it signifies control and 
not suppression. Indeed, the French spirit is so nearly Classical 
that it would be hazardous to attempt a distinction. What ] 
makes it so is the sense of balance: the ability of the cultivated [ 
Frenchman, illustrated again and again in history, though 
never better than in the generation of 1660, to strike a middle j 
course. The Classical traits of reason, art, social form, and 
nature were then held, so to speak, in suspension — not in fixed 
proportions, but in deference to the value of each. Beneath the 
veneer of art, there were the social problems, rationally 

8 Racine's vocabulary is much less than one-half that of Shakespeare. 
• See Wright, French Classicism, page 104. 



282 LOUIS XIV AND THE CLASSICAL SPIRIT 

considered, with great wealth of observation. Or the emphasis 
might be reversed: a social or scientific problem is to the fore 
and art is accessory; yet the form being artistic the problem 
treated carries delight and conviction to its public. It may be 
doubted whether, as " truth," the character types of Racine and 
Moliere have ever been equalled. They have their limitations, 
of course. They may lack individual freedom, power — some 
may say — beauty. But that they are " real " is beyond cavil. 
Thus the Age of Louis XIV is the representative French age. 
Classicism is the harmonious inter- working of life and art./ 
It is the time when the individual and the type are most evenly 
matched; when men look beyond the individual for the actual 
traits of the type, and when, at the same time, " a mesure qu'on 
a plus d'esprit, on trouve qu'il y a plus d'hommes originaux. 
Les gens du commun ne trouvent pas de difference entre les ' 
homines." Into these words Pascal has distilled the essence of 
French seventeenth- century culture. 



CHAPTER II 

THE WRITERS OF MEMOIRS AND MAXIMS 
WOMEN WRITERS 

The first Classicist, in his attitude towards human nature, was 
La Rochefoucauld. There is an exquisite page by Sainte-Beuve 
La Roche- in which the great critic recalls that Mme de Sevigne 
foucauld once suggested papering a bedroom with the backs 
of playing-cards. Thus the trumps of the evening before would 
appear to us in the morning in a wholly different light: we had 
retired believing in Chimene, Polyeucte, Auguste or some other 
queen or king of romance ; we would awaken to behold the other 
side of the picture. This other side of life, le revers de la medaille, 
is La Rochefoucauld. He, too, has his interest, the interest of a 
fresh discovery. And as we proceed to drain his bitterness and 
wax enthusiastic over it, we ourselves grow calm and collected, 
aware of the fact, which La Rochefoucauld never allows us to 
forget, that life has the two sides, ideal and real, separated by 
an attitude. 

Frangois VI, Due de la Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marsillac, 
was born at Paris in 1613. He had an adventurous and noisy 
youth, taking a very active part in the Fronde. 
"II y eut," said Cardinal de Retz, "toujours du 
je ne sais quoi en tout M. de La Rochefoucauld." This irresolu- 
tion, seen chiefly in a sentimental attachment for women — Mme 
de Chevreuse, the Duchess of Longueville, Mme de Sable and 
Mme de La Fayette — led him to turn his back on fortune. 
Wounded at the combat of the Porte Saint- Antoine, and disap- 
pointed at the triumph of Mazarin, he retired in 1653, first 
abroad, and then to his estate at Verteuil. In 1656 he returned 
to Paris to enjoy a disillusioned but peaceful old age in the dis- 
tinguished circles which he helped to create. He died in 1680, in 
the arms of Bossuet. His Memoires were first published in 1662, 
and his Maximes in 1664-1665. 

283 



284 THE WRITERS OF MEMOIRS AND MAXIMS 

Unlike Montaigne, La Rochefoucauld prizes his personal ob- 
servation as on a par with general truth; he distinguishes the 
two, does justice to each, and hence is aware of the 
bearing of each on the other. His truest observa- 
tion is probably that " Nobody deserves to be praised for doing 
good unless he possesses the power of doing evil." Goodness 
to him is an exceptional act — this is the keynote of his aris- 
tocratic code. The fact that humanity is mostly a failure 
is no reason why it should always be one. Thus La Roche- 
foucauld's " truths " are the reflections of a spirit essentially 
idealistic. 

The Memoires are the record of his own failures, objectively 
told. With intentional coldness the work recounts the fiasco 
of the Fronde and the futile attempt of La Rochefoucauld to 
free the Queen from the tyranny of Richelieu. The Maximes 
crystallize the poignancy of human experience in a phrase. In 
itself, the maxim was a product of the salon of Mme de Sable. 
This great lady, daughter of the Marechal de Souvre, united good 
breeding with a keen intelligence and an interest in the Jansen- 
ists of Port-Royal. Under her direction it became a social game 
not only to draw portraits in words but also to summarize discus- 
sions in a sentence. For this there were Italian models, 1 and Mme 
de Sable's own " maxims " were not without merit, while those by 
a certain Esprit — the Faussetes des vertus humaines — attained 
considerable vogue. Those of La Rochefoucauld were offered at 
the lady's shrine as incense: years were given to polishing and 
improving each maxim; and when the slender volume at last 
appeared it was to undergo both excision and expansion and, 
thanks to the later influence of Mme de La Fayette, considerable 
softening in tone. The success of the Maximes rests as much on 
the happy turn of the thought — the trimness and ingenuity of 
expression — as upon the observations expressed. La Roche- 
foucauld has an instinct, improved by practice, for the mot 
propre. " Quand les vices nous quittent," he says, " nous nous 
flattons de la creance que c'est nous qui les quittons." And 
again, " Les vices entrent dans la composition des vertus, comme 
les poisons entrent dans la composition des remedes" For the 
most part, however, the exaggeration is slight and the observa- 

1 See especially Guazzo, La civil Conversazione, 1574. 



RETZ 285 

tion is not only telling but also profound. Thus poetry unites 
with truth in such maxims as " With true love it is as with appa- 
ritions — every one talks of them but few persons have seen 
them," and " Virtues lose themselves in self-interest as rivers 
lose themselves in the sea." Like Moliere, La Rochefoucauld 
is a remorseless critic of life. He is not without pity, but he 
is as relentless to himself as to society in regard to the motives 
which we constantly misrepresent, for " Society rewards more 
often the appearance of merit than merit itself." 

Finally, there is his Parnassian style — a style that has the 
quality of an inscription: lapidary, concise, completely adequate. 
But it is a style without relief, having no transitions, and hence 
wearisome in the long run. La Rochefoucauld is not a great 
writer: he harps too much on one string, but the vibrations from 
that string are true to human nature the world over. 

Without a scintilla of La Rochefoucauld's nobility but possess- 
ing far more dash and brilliancy was his contemporary, Paul de 
The Cardinal Gondi, Cardinal de Retz (1614-1679). Never a 
de Retz sentimentalist, Retz was an Italian by birth and 

tradition, and he sought to play a role as a worldly and profligate 
churchman. At seventeen he wrote the Histoire de la conjuration 
de Fiesque, a work that opened Richelieu's eyes to the potential 
dangers of this fledgling. In 1652 he was made a cardinal through 
intrigue. Imprisoned because of his part in the Fronde, he es- 
caped, passed eight years in Spain, Holland and Rome, and in 1662 
returned to France after having resigned his bishopric with a 
grandeur d'ame which was truly Cornelian (Lanson). His 
Memoires, written about 1671 though not published until 1717, 
are an attempt to rehabilitate himself in the eyes of posterity — 
another trait of the Frondeur. In an admirable portrait of him 
La Rochefoucauld emphasizes these qualities: " beaucoup d'ele- 
vation, d'etendue d'esprit, et plus d'ostentation que de vraie 
grandeur de courage." 

There is something demoniac in Retz's audacity (Dowden), 
of which the Memoires are the expression. This work relates what 
Retz desired to be believed. He changes dates, falsifies facts and 
motives, but is always vivid and intensely real. In particular, 
his account of the " Journee des Barricades " pulsates with the 
vigor of an actual occurrence and reveals his power as a de- 



286 THE WRITERS OF MEMOIRS AND MAXIMS 

scriptive artist of the first rank. The same trait appears in the 
extended correspondence he exchanged with the notables of his 
time. Retz is particularly strong in his discussion of politics and 
in his portraits. In both directions he shows astuteness and a 
sense of color, although brilliancy of idea and of style remains 
his chief asset. Thus in every regard he is a survival of the age 
of Corneille. 

Another Frondeur, but this time an ardent defender of the 
royal faction, was Charles de Marguetel de Saint-Denis, Seigneur 
Saint- de Saint-Evremond (1613-1703). Yet in his writ- 

Evremond m g S h e maintains a detached point of view. Hav- 
ing publicly criticized the Peace of the Pyrenees, he had to leave 
France (1661) in order to escape the Bastille. He retired to 
England and there spent forty-two years of his- life, dying on 
the threshold of the eighteenth century and being the only 
Frenchman buried in Westminster Abbey. Thus Saint-Evre- 
mond spans the century, touching only its extremes and unin- 
fluenced by Classicism itself. He is one of the really "free " 
spirits. Precieux and libertin by origin, he holds to Corneille 
against the rising fame of Racine, and he concludes by admiring 
Bayle and by breaking a lance for the Moderns (see below) in 
his treatise Sur les Poemes anciens (1685). Less of a writer than 
a cosmopolite of liberal ideas, he was not keen to publish, 
and in fact his Veritables (Euvres did not appear until after 
his death in 1705. These works consist of reflections on 
diverse topics, generally more interesting than sound, but 
always expressed with ease and simplicity. Sainte-Beuve re- 
garded him as the most distinguished example of the courtiers 
of 1660. 

Others there were of a similar but less worthy type, such as the 
vainglorious Chevalier de Mere (1609-1684) and the captious but 
Women very able and witty Bussy-Rabutin (1618-1693). 

Writers Mere gave one of the earliest and most elaborate 

definitions of the honnete homme, besides suggesting to Pascal 
various fruitful reflections ; whereas Bussy excelled by the perfect 
trimness of his epistolary style, seen above all in his cor- 
respondence with distinguished women. But it is these latter 
who illustrate best the mundane spirit and the background of 
social brilliancy and intrigue upon which Classicism was nurtured. 



MME DE LA FAYETTE 287 

This background is still covered with a veil of romance in the 
works of Mme de La Fayette, the " truest " woman whom La 
Mme de Rochefoucauld had ever known. Her maiden name 

La Fayette was Marie-Madeleine Pioche de la Vergne ; and she 
was born in Havre (1634) , of which city her father was governor. 
She received an excellent education, partly at the hands of 
Menage and of Rapin, and was early introduced to the precieux 
circles of the capital. Married at twenty-one to the Comte de 
La Fayette, she became the intimate of Mme de Sevigne and of 
the gracious but unhappy Henrietta of England, whose Memoirs 
she wrote. During the later years of his life La Rochefoucauld 
found in her a devoted friend, and she in him doubtless a helpful 
literary mentor. She survived him by thirteen years, dying in 
1693. 

Her greatest work is La Princesse de Cleves (1678), one of 
the classic novels of French literature. This was preceded by 
several works 2 published under the name of Segrais, the most 
interesting of which is Zayde, histoire espagnole, in which Mme 
de La Fayette attempts to reduce to reasonable proportions 
the complicated intrigue of the heroic romances (see Bk. Ill, 
Ch. II). But success along this line was reserved for the first- 
mentioned work; borrowing the technique of the Cornelian 
drama and applying it for the first time to the domain of the 
novel, the author here presents a simple situation in terms that 
are psychologically true to life. 

The subject of La Princesse de Cleves is, according to Lanson, 
that of " Polyeucte moins la religion." A married woman loves 
a courtier who is not her husband, and becoming aware of the 
growth of her affection appeals to her husband to protect her 
against herself. Thinking himself deceived, M. de Cleves falls 
ill and dies, though not without being told of his error; where- 
upon his wife, free to choose her lover, chooses a life of seclusion 
instead. The plot and personages were borrowed in part from 
Perefixe, 3 who recounts an event at the court of Henry II. But 
the motivation, the characterization and, above all, the charm 
of the novel belong to Mme de La Fayette. There is about the 
story an air of the medieval romun d'aventure] and although 

* She began with a short -story, Mile de Montpensier, 1662. 
1 Histoire de Henri le Grand, 1662. 



288 THE WRITERS OF MEMOIRS AND MAXIMS 

realism is not its strongest side, its pathos and its beauty are 
alike impressive — and its psychology is that of an aristocratic 
soul. As regards form, La Princesse de Cleves is a landmark in 
the history of its genre. With it the historical romance acquires 
not only depth but proportion as well. 

On the whole, Mme de La Fayette writes simply and without 
affectation ; her style is luminous rather than passionate, nor does 
it lack ironic touches and an occasional bit of malice. 

A letter-writer only, but probably the greatest one the world 
has ever had, is Mme de Sevigne. Her correspondence is the 
Mme de " tableau- vivant " of the seventeenth century, and 
Sevigne f or soc j a i portraiture it equals the works of Saint- 

Simon, while written with much more fairness though less scope. 

Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, who at eighteen married the 
Marquis of Sevigne — a Breton nobleman — was born at Paris 
in 1626 and died at Grignan in 1696. A granddaughter of that 
Mme de Chantal whom Francois de Sales knew, and a cousin 
of Bussy-Rabutin, she belonged to one of the best families in 
France. Left an orphan in childhood, she fell to the care of an 
uncle, the Abbe de Coulanges, who gave her an excellent educa- 
tion, to which both Chapelain and Menage contributed instruc- 
tion in foreign languages. Personally, she had beauty despite 
the square nose and the yeux bigarres with which she reproached 
herself. In addition, she possessed a sparkling wit and, what is 
more remarkable for her time, an outright and sincere manner 
of speech. Thus she was fitted to become a social leader with- 
out falling a prey to preciosity or to worldly intrigue. 

Her husband, another light-hearted Frondeur, was killed in a 
duel (1651), leaving his young wife with two children, a daughter 
Franchise, and a son Charles. She married her daughter (1668) 
to the Comte de Grignan, a lieutenant-general of Provence, and 
supported her son in the army. Meanwhile, she consoled herself 
for her solitude by leading an active social life. In 1677 she 
bought the Hotel Carna valet, where she kept open house until 
her death. But she also visited other parts of France, passing 
the summer at Les Rochers, the family estate in Brittany, 
or going to Provence for a sojourn with her daughter. Mme 
de Sevigne was fond of bucolic Nature, while the great passion 
of her life — the only passion that ever blinded her — was 
her affection for her daughter. 



MME DE SEVIGNE 289 

The great bulk of her Letters, and they fill many volumes, 
are addressed to Mme de Grignan. Others were written to 
Bussy-Rabutin, Mme de La Fayette, and a few 
friends — in short, a rather intimate circle. But 
in a day when the means of communication were slow and 
journalism was in its infancy, 4 the arrival of a letter was an 
event and the composition thereof a matter of consequence. 
Thus, writing from the center of the world to her daughter in 
the provinces, Mme de Sevigne was not merely a purveyor of 
information on all important subjects, but also a sympathetic 
and imaginative critic. Indeed, her greatest gift is a vivid 
imagination, one which permitted her to gauge at a distance the 
effect that her messages would make upon the recipient. As 
M. Lanson has observed, her Letters have light, color and move- 
ment. They are not over-emotional: the execution of the Mar- 
quise de La Brinvilliers (convicted of poisoning) becomes under 
her pen a masterpiece of piquant description. Or take her 
Letter on the Death of Turenne, written a full month after this 
general died; nothing that is significant is omitted, the details 
are presented vividly, with extraordinary freshness — but what 
is more, they are intelligently presented, the particular passes 
over into the general, and such facts as escaped her eye her 
fancy supplies. Having no theory to uphold, she thus becomes 
the mirror of her age. In a style that is at once brilliant and 
rational, she touches upon all aspects of her time: the court, the 
city, the country-side, her own domestic life and, lastly, her 
extensive and solid reading. The Letters are not only an in- 
valuable social and literary document but also the expression 
of a spirited and sensible woman of the world. They include 
also the doings of her many friends, for she was amiable and 
widely esteemed. 

Masculine perseverance, rather than feminine charm and wit, 
accounts for the remarkable role which Mme de Maintenon 
Mme de was to play in the destinies of France. Noteworthy, 

aintenon £ 00) j s ^ p arac j ox between her common-sense mind 
and the startling romance of her career. " C'est une fortune 
d'aventuriere, avec Fesprit le moins aventurier du monde," 
says M. Lanson. 

* La Gazette de France published four pages weekly, from 1631 on, and Le Met' 
cure Qalant began as a quarterly in 1672. 



290 THE WRITERS OF MEMOIRS AND MAXIMS 

Granddaughter of the great Protestant poet, Frangoise 
d'Aubigne (1635-1719) 5 was born in a prison. Taken to the 
West Indies by her father, whom she lost in childhood, placed 
in a convent in order to be converted to Catholicism, dependent 
on her own efforts for an education, she married early the 
talented but broken-down Scarron. On the latter's death, her 
steadfastness won her the position of governess to the children 
of Mme de Montespan and Louis XIV. This was her " stroke 
of fortune." Painstaking, regular, faithful to the point of self- 
effacement, she gradually became the confidant and friend of the 
King — and soon after the death of Marie-Therese she was 
secretly married to him (1684). As her correspondence makes 
clear, she had not the genius to intrigue for this post; on the 
contrary, it came to her by force of circumstance: among all 
those close to Louis she alone had the power to heal and reform, 
at least to attenuate, the ills of Louis' declining years. Thus 
she made it her calling to bring him back to the church. 

It is possible to exaggerate this influence. At the same time, 
the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685), following so 
quickly upon her marriage, had her approval, just as it was 
due to her that Louis henceforth surrounded himself with fol- 
lowers and not with leaders. In one respect Mme de Maintenon 
showed genius; namely, in the foundation of Saint-Cyr, a school 
for the daughters of poor but well-born people. Here she, a 
Romanist, carried into execution the principles of the Jansenists 
of Port-Royal. It was for Saint-Cyr that Racine wrote his last 
two plays: Esther, with which he justly triumphed, and Athalie, 
with which he unjustly failed. 

As for literature, Mme de Maintenon is known by various 
Lettres, Avis, Conversations and Proverbes. Of all these it is the 
Lettres that reflect her character best. They are not, like Mme 
de Sevigne's, the creation of genius. But they reveal a knowl- 
edge of human nature, a sense of justice and balance, and a 
passion for Reason — a name by which Mme de Maintenon was 
currently known. Again the masculine note is dominant; ac- 
cordingly, Mme de Maintenon is just to others, direct and 
natural, and her business letters in particular are products of 
a practical and efficient mind. 

e In 1675 Louis XIV gave her the title of Marquise de Maintenon. 



CHAPTER III 
MOLIERE AND LA FONTAINE 

By giving rise to the writing of Memoirs and Letters the 
Fronde had distilled the pungency of realism. In the two 
geniuses before us realism is a gift of the gods; hence it is 
creative rather than merely critical and ironic. Moliere and 
La Fontaine are linked with the tradition of Rabelais: both 
belong to the libertin or epicurean current of the century; both 
affirm life on a rational, common-sense basis; in both dwells 
the spirit of comedy. "What great writer has most honored 
my reign? " Louis XIV once asked of Boileau. " Moliere, 
Sire," replied the great critic. La Fontaine, being more lyrical, 
is less universal; but he is a great French poet, possessed of 
a sensitive and highly artistic temperament. 

Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, who took the stage-name of Moliere, 
was born in the Rue Saint-Honore (Paris) about the middle of 
Moliere's January, 1622. His mother, Marie Cresse, who was 
Life well-to-do in her own right, died when her eldest 

was ten. Jean Poquelin, his father, bought in 1631 the post of 
tapissier ordinaire de la maison du roi, to which was later added 
the title of valet de chambre. There were but eight such " royal 
upholsterers," and it is clear that the Poquelin family enjoyed 
some distinction among the bourgeoisie. In 1637 the reversion 
of the father's office was settled on the poet, who was, however, to 
have an excellent education. The College de Clermont, today 
the College Louis-le-Grand, had been founded in Paris by the 
Jesuits and was attracting the scions of the better-class citizens. 
Thither Moliere was sent. He there followed the regular courses 
in science and grammar, which included a careful study of 
Plautus and Terence, and he became attached to his schoolmate, 
Chapelle, who was already somewhat of a wit and society dandy. 
When young Chapelle and Cyrano de Bergerac were placed 
under the tutelage of the philosopher Gassendi, Moliere 

291 



292 MOLIERE AND LA FONTAINE 

probably joined them. Certain it is that Moliere tried his hand 
at a translation of Lucretius' Be natura rerum, the influence 
of which is reflected in Le Misanthrope (Act II, Sc. V). The 
result of such an education was two-fold: it grounded the 
poet in a knowledge of Roman Comedy, and it initiated him 
into the philosophy of epicureanism. 

It is also said — this time by an enemy of the poet — that 
Moliere studied law at Orleans. But this is doubtful, as is 
also the claim that the poet accompanied Louis XIII as an 
apprentice " upholsterer " to Narbonne in 1642. Whatever may 
have been his previous intention, at the age of twenty-one he 
renounced his father's succession and became an actor — and an 
impresario. 

His associates in this career were a family of vagabond 
players, the Bejarts, one of whom, Madeleine Bejart, figures 
cruelly in his private and professional life. With them Moliere 
founded the so-called Illustre Theatre. But the difficulty of 
finding a stage for their performances and the choice of heavy 
tragedy parts, for which Moliere in particular was unsuited, 
spelled disaster, and by 1645 the elder Poquelin was obliged 
to rescue his son from a debtors' prison. 

For a period of thirteen years, the company then toured the 
provinces as " barn-stormers." The ox-cart of Madeleine be- 
came the chariot of Thespis ; Scarron in his Roman comique has 
described the vicissitudes of a strolling troupe which cannot be 
unlike those that proved Moliere's metal. Hard as these years 
were, they had their compensation. The company won the ser- 
vices of Mile Du Pare, then in her prime ; it displayed its wares 
before princely patrons; and finally, it discovered Moliere's 
genius as a writer of comedy — UEtourdi (" The Blunderer ") , 
the first of his undoubted plays, being performed at Lyons in 
1655. We learn this from La Grange, who joined the troupe in 
1658, and whose Registre is the most authentic account of the 
poet's subsequent activity. In the interval Moliere had pro- 
duced his Bepit amoureux (" Lovers' Quarrel ") , like his first 
play, composed in the manner of the Italian Comedy of Masks. 

But real success awaited him in Paris. His troupe had re- 
turned to the capital in 1658 and on the invitation of Monsieur 
(the Duke of Anjou) had given a performance before the court. 



THE EARLY COMEDIES 293 

A week later the company was given permission to use the stage 
of the Petit Bourbon, a theater adjoining the Louvre. Here it 
was, on November eighteenth, 1659, that all Paris laughed at 
Les Precieuses ridicules. Apt and timely, this trim little satire 
was a page from real life. And it was in Moliere's true vein, 
bubbling over with hilarious humor. But if it pleased the multi- 
tude, it angered the blue-stockings and the petty marquises 
who resented the fidelity of Mascarille's impersonation. Ob- 
viously, Moliere had sown dragon's teeth. On the other hand, 
he had won the support of the Grand Monarque, who rejoiced 
when Moliere returned to the charge with Les Fdcheux (" The 
Bores "), a dramatic skit which was composed overnight for the 
royal visit to Vaux-le-Vicomte, and which elicited the following 
praise from La Fontaine: 

jamais il ne fit si bon 
Se trouver a la comedie . . . 
Nous avons change de methode; 
Jodelet n'est plus a la mode, 
Et maintenant il ne faut pas 
Quitter la nature d'un pas. 

Meanwhile, our dramatist was busy with more serious ques- 
tions. L' Ecole des maris (1661) broaches the eternal question 
of the education and marriage of women. The theme was a 
favorite one during the Renaissance: Terence's Adelphi had 
shown how futile harsh methods are with the young male; the 
Spanish Mendoza had shifted the interest to the treatment of 
wives in his Marido hace mujer (" The Husband makes the 
Wife ") . On this double basis Moliere constructed his play. 
Sganarelle, who treats his charge severely, is outwitted by her; 
whereas Ariste, who consents to Leonor's " young wishes," cap- 
tures her affection. As pure comedy, based on an obvious but 
easily ignored truth, the Ecole des maris is admirable; Voltaire 
thought it " the best that Moliere ever contrived," but Voltaire 
was writing in the eighteenth century. A goodly portion of 
Moliere's spectators might well be nettled at his liberalism. They 
manifestly were when in December, 1662, the dramatist brought 
out his far more emphatic Ecole des femmes, with its immortal 
contrast of old age and youth as revealed in the characters of 
Arnolphe and Agnes. 



294 MOLIERE AND LA FONTAINE 

One need not see in an author's work mainly the revelation 
of his own life in order to realize that UEcole des jemmes treats 
the incompatibility problem unsparingly. On Shrove Monday, 
1662, Moliere had married Armande Bejart, the daughter, of 
Madeleine and many years his junior. Frenchman that he 
was, he could have had no illusions on such a relationship. Be 
that as it may, his play vindicates the right of youth and woman 
to choose a mate. Agnes is no Miranda, but it is nature that 
guides her and no evil instinct of her own; whereas Arnolphe, 
the comic character of the plot, is a victim of his personal 
machinations. Here, then, we see Moliere's genius for treating a 
serious situation comically. Herein lies the germ of his great- 
ness: his passion for truth-telling, his sense of contrasts, his 
clear-sighted vision of inevitable fact — and also his heroism, 
which compels him to speak when speaking is contrary to his 
interest, to rail when the subject of his raillery is his personal 
misery and suffering. Quite aside from his plays, the character 
of Moliere has endeared him to the world. 

Among his contemporaries, however, there were those whom 
his frankness scandalized. And these, together with his former 
victims, now gathered for an attack. De Vise said he lacked 
literary principles; the Prince de Conti, a former friend, ac- 
cused him of indecency; the Jansenists quoted against him 
Nicole's Traite de la comedie, a vehement piece of polemic 
literature. To this uproar Moliere replied with the charming 
Critique de VEcole des jemmes and the clever Impromptu de 
Versailles. The first, in the form of a salon conversation, con- 
tains excellent dramatic criticism, and the second, portraying the 
rehearsal of a play to be given before the King, exploits Moliere's 
ideas on acting, and burlesques the rival players of the Hotel 
de Bourgogne. The result was that all the reactionary forces 
of the capital launched a cabal that was to pursue the poet to 
his grave. 

For the nonce the King encouraged the poet with a pension, 
of one thousand francs; and others who sided with him were 
Colbert and especially Boileau, henceforth a reliable friend. 
The next six years were to see the masterpieces Tartuffe, Don 
Juan, he Misanthrope and UAvare. Undoubtedly Moliere had 
the material ready to hand, but would he have written these 
works without the stimulus of opposition? 



THE MASTERPIECES 295 

In May, 1664, Louis XIV gave at Versailles the festival 
known as " The Pleasures of the Enchanted Isle," in honor of 
Mile de la Valliere. Here seemed a chance to strike a blow 
at the upholders of cant and reaction. Accordingly, Moliere 
came forward with the first three acts of Tartuffe. To 
his astonishment, the play was immediately forbidden after 
its first performance. Evidently Moliere had undervalued the 
power of his opponents. It might do for a Bossuet to excoriate 
hypocrites in his sermon on Le Jugement dernier; for the stage 
to attempt it was an unheard-of insult. Besides, excepting 
the momentary defection of Louis, the stakes were set in France 
for a religious revival on a large scale. To distinguish hypocrisy 
from religious zeal is always a delicate task; in 1664 it was 
an impossible one. But Moliere was not to be suppressed. 
Unable to play Tartuffe, he produced Don Juan ou le Festin de 
Pierre (1665), in which hypocrisy becomes the crowning vice of 
the " grand seigneur mauvais homme." A vast improvement 
on its Spanish and Italian sources, the French Don Juan 
is a character study on a Shakespearean scale — doubtless, 
one of the greatest of Moliere's creations. But again the censor 
interfered, though not until the play had been performed some 
fifteen times to crowded houses. In fact, the very year of its 
appearance Moliere's company received the title of " Troupe 
royale " and an allowance of six thousand livres. Then came 
L' Amour medecin (" Love as a Doctor ") , ultimately derived from 
the Old French fabliau of the Vilain mire, and, after a consider- 
able interval, Le Misanthrope and Le Medecin malgre lui. Two 
of these plays are again militant: this time the poet lashes the 
medical Tartuffes; whereas Le Misanthrope, often called " the 
French Hamlet," states the problem of the Individual versus 
Society — two forces irreconcilable, unless, like Philinte in the 
play, men can be made to compromise: 

La parfaite raison fuit toute extremite, 
Et veut que Ton soit sage avec sobriete. 

Thus, in a nutshell, Moliere sums up the Classical doctrine in all 
its implications. 

He himself now attempted a compromise. Tartuffe is tried 
on the stage in the guise of Ulmposteur (1667), the hero being 



296 MOLIERE AND LA FONTAINE 

no longer a cleric but a man of the world, and the action being 
lengthened so that he may scheme to marry his victim's daughter. 
This ruse of Moliere's did not succeed. But it did benefit 
his play, for when Pope Clement proclaimed a Paix de I'Eglise 
and the ban against Moliere was finally lifted, the drama ap- 
peared as Tartuffe (1669), but in its expanded five-act form. 

The rest of Moliere's story is quickly told. In the four or 
five years that remained to him of life he was content to please 
his King and go his own way, heedless of what his enemies might 
contrive. His health was now impaired by a serious illness; 
his father, whose solvency he had twice rescued by a loan, died 
in 1669; but his success as a producer was reasonably secure. 
L' Amphitryon and L'Avare had appeared in 1668 — the one in 
a lighter, the other in a heavier vein, though both are modeled on 
comedies of Plautus. In the first, Moliere toys delightfully with 
the amorous proclivities of Jupiter (Louis XIV) " emprisonne 
dans sa grandeur," while in L'Avare he improves on Plautus by 
representing the miser as rich, and avarice as a fixed trait of 
character. Georges Dandin, Monsieur de Pourceaugnac, Le 
Bourgeois gentilhomme, La Comtesse d'Escarbagnas are four 
social portraits drawn largely from real life; all on the general 
theme that man must not aspire in the wrong direction, or 
Nature (this time, " society ") takes vengeance. The social or 
intellectual climber is foredoomed. This philosophy shines forth 
most clearly in Les Femmes savantes, the next to the last play 
from Moliere's pen. Here, in inimitable verse, the poet gives 
us a picture of a typical " woman's club " of the seventeenth 
century. Trissotin (a caricature of the Abbe Cotin) is the ex- 
ploiter of these ambitious women; Vadius (possibly Menage) 
is a self- centered pedant. One may sympathize with the in- 
tellectual aims of the strong-minded Philaminte; but shall her 
daughters' happiness be sacrificed to these ideals? There can 
be but one answer, and the charming Henriette gives it: 

Et qu'est-ce qu'a mon age on a de mieux a faire 

Que d'attacher a soi, par le titre d'epoux, 

Un homme qui vous aime et soit aime de vous? 

And, finally, we come to the heroic Malade imaginaire, Moliere's 
last gibe at physicians and their victims. Argan, the " imaginary 



MOLIERE'S ART 297 

invalid," would sacrifice his family to his paranoia. Thus the 
poet never tired of puncturing the egoisms of life. What 
justifies the epithet of heroic, applied to this play, is that Moliere, 
a real not an imaginary invalid, acted the part of Argan in it 
and during the third performance, on February 17, 1673, had a 
hemorrhage from which he died. Three days later, at nine 
in the evening, his fellow-actors buried him in the cemetery of 
Saint-Joseph. 

" C'est une etrange entreprise que celle de faire rire les hon- 
netes gens," says Moliere. True comedy requires experience 
Moliere's on the part of poet and audience; both must be 
Art cultured, sophisticated, and to a certain extent dis- 

illusioned. To laugh at our ills demands a fortitude of spirit, 
greater than that necessary for tragedy. Further, it implies 
a ready passage of wit from actor to spectator ; the apperceptions 
must be quick, discriminating, and, above all, sincere. It is 
no exaggeration to say that in Moliere comedy achieves all 
this; and he is therefore the greatest comic genius among the 
moderns. 

In the first place, Moliere is profound. His friend Boileau 
called him " le grand contemplateur," which is another way 
of saying that he looked human nature through and through. 
Consequently the sources of his laughter are genuine. With 
a flash, he penetrates the absurdity and presents it to us in a 
phrase, an attitude, a gesture. " Nous avons change tout cela," 
is the reply of the physician whose ignorance is so abysmal 
that he places the heart on the right side of the body; Orgon, 
convinced of TartufiVs humility, lulls his own mind to sleep 
with the phrase, " Le pauvre homme " ; " Tant de choses en deux 
mots," says the simple-minded M. Jourdain, — " Oui," replies 
his betrayer, " la langue turque est comme cela." Moliere rarely 
strikes a false note — which is the more remarkable when we 
consider how rapidly he wrote. The reason is that his comedy 
is a comedy of character rather than one of situation. To be 
sure, his point of departure is the farce and the romantic Spanish 
comedia, to say nothing of the Italian Comedy of Masks, from 
which he borrowed not only situations and plots but also comic 
types, such as Mascarille and Sganarelle. In many respects, 
he remained essentially a farceur, as M. Lanson contends. At the 



298 MOLIERE AND LA FONTAINE 

same time, given the time and opportunity, his imagination al- 
ways transcended the type and reached the individual. Thus 
in Le Bourgeois gentilhonime we forget " the farce " and remem- 
ber the innocent, kindly but beguiled figure of M. Jourdain; 
and in L'Avare the screamingly amusing incidents of the plot 
sink into oblivion beside the hard, old and cringing form of 
Harpagon, the miser. In all this Moliere's touchstone was nature. 
Realist that he was, he knew that for the most part human 
character cannot be changed. Reason and ridicule are good 
weapons, but only for protection — they do not win souls. The 
Alceste of Le Misanthrope remains atrabilious to the end. Don 
Juan is "an alarming image of intellectual power and pride"; 
we rejoice at his doom but we cannot hope for his salvation. 
Even Tartuffe, the seducer and swindler, has a stately grandeur 
that came to him with birth. 

The second great trait of Moliere is his unalterable 
common sense. On occasion Moliere could be gay: Les Pre- 
cieuses ridicules and Le Medecin malgre lui are continuous ripples 
of laughter. More often, however, his comedies verge on tragedy 
— a notable example being Le Misanthrope which varies with 
one's point of view: Rousseau regarded its action as tragic. 
But Moliere never fails us in common sense. Thus his point of 
view has balance, measure, universality of application. Unlike 
Bernard Shaw, he has confidence in the wisdom of the world at 
large. To Shaw, illusion is part of the universe's structure ; 
not so with Moliere. The self-deceptions of his characters are 
individualistic; they can be dealt with competently by society, 
taken generally. This, as we have noted, is the Classical creed. 
Hence the comic in Moliere is what flies in the face of the sense 
of mankind: Alceste is ridiculous because he wants to have 
things his own way. So, too, we may allow that Philaminte — 
in Les Femmes savantes — is admirable in her devotion to gram- 
mar and astronomy ; she becomes comic when this trait destroys 
her common sense. 

Finally, there is Moliere the artist. " Encore une fois, je le 
trouve grand," said Fenelon, "mais ne puis-je parler en toute 
liberte sur ses defauts?" To the " decorous " seventeenth century 
Moliere's faults were obvious. His style seemed careless, in- 
organic, slapdash. It was as a matter of fact the style of every- 



MOLIERE'S STYLE 299 

day Parisian speech, conversational, yet fitting his personages 
like a garb. 

Et fort denotement il mangea deux perdrix 
Avec une moitie de gigot en hachis 

is the verbal nutshell in which Dorine encases Tartuffe. Tartuffe, 
notably, is an artistic masterpiece. The first two acts, with 
their description of a French bourgeois household, the exposition 
they contain of the hypocrite's character as revealed by its effect 
on others, the coup de theatre produced by Tartuffe's opening 
words in Act III: 

Laurent, serrez ma haire avec ma discipline 
Et priez que tou jours le Ciel vous illumine 

— aroused the admiration not only of Goethe but also of dra- 
matic critics the world over. Or take Le Misanthrope — nowhere 
is there a more harmonious blending of social wit and psycho- 
logical observation. The scene is a salon of the age of Louis 
XIV: Celimene, who presides over it, will not give up her role in 
order to marry Alceste; the latter, whose sensitiveness embroils 
him with others, will marry her on this condition only. The 
situation is an impasse — yet it is Moliere who makes us realize 
the fact, once for all. Amphitryon, one of the most charmingly 
written of the plays, is a poetic treatment of a distinctly shady 
affair. The comedy of Plautus adhered to the tenets of a myth ; 
these Moliere had to discard. Never did a dramatist set him- 
self a more delicate task. Yet how excellent is the treatment 
and how modern in its psychology! If Jupiter would win 
Alcmene he of course could; but Moliere stresses the fact that 
he wins her only as Amphitryon and never as Jupiter — is this 
a lover's triumph? 

To conclude — we may admit that being a playwright and 
an actor Moliere worked against odds, hastily. Many a scene 
in his works is pure farce, thrown in as a filler, in order to 
produce a laugh or relieve a tenuous situation. His denouements, 
in particular, are weak, though Moliere's emphasis on character 
necessarily made a happy ending difficult. In any case, he was 
not a strenuous Aristotelian. But French comedy — with the 
notable exception of Corneille's Menteur — was in low estate in 



300 /MOLIERE AND LA FONTAINE 

his day. It was Moliere who raised it to the highest plane, as a 
criticism of life. To compare his contemporaries, Quinault, Baron, 
Montfleury, shows how true this is. What a gallery of portraits 
he has left us! How vivid is his presentation, how brilliant his 
wit! Above all, how well he knew the human race! 

Contrasted with Moliere, La Fontaine is not at first impressive. 
A writer of fables and short-stories (the latter of a dubious char- 
La Fontaine acter )> his Preeminence in these lighter genres is 
due to lightness and delicacy of touch, to an instinct 
for the nuance, to a desire for finish and perfection — all of which 
qualities endear him to the French but render him less accessible 
than Moliere to foreigners. 

By nature a vagabond and a dreamer, Jean de La Fontaine 
was born at Chateau-Thierry in 1621. The profligacy of this 
son of Champagne showed itself early. Lacking in self-control, 
he was sent to the religious seminary of the Oratoire; then like 
Moliere he studied law. Returning to his native heath, he 
planned to succeed his father as maitre des eaux et forets and 
allowed himself to be married at twenty-six, to Marie Hericart, 
a romantic child of fifteen; with the inevitable result of a dis- 
agreement, which sent La Fontaine back to Paris to try his 
fortune in literature. 

In his reading, La Fontaine had adored the Astree and 
delved into the mimic world of Ovid, " in which every plant and 
flower has a story, and nearly always a love story." His own 
writing began with an adaptation of the Eunuchus of Terence 
(1654) — notable, if at all, because it is his longest work. Al- 
ready, however, his epicurean attitude declares itself and his 
gift of phrase is apparent. In 1657 he became a hanger-on of 
Fouquet, still the wealthy and powerful minister of Louis XIV; 
in this capacity he wrote various short poems, the best of which 
is Adonis, showing a remarkable feeling for bucolic nature; 
and in 1661 he became acquainted with Moliere. Parasite that 
he was, he yet had the courage to stand by Fouquet, after the 
latter's fall from grace, in the Elegie aux nymphs de Vaux, 
one of the most eloquent of his compositions. Henceforth his 
protectors were women. 

From 1667 to 1672 his patroness was the gay and pleasure- 
loving Duchesse de Bouillon, niece of Mazarin. In his para- 



LA FONTAINE 301 

phrase of Psyche, belonging to this period, he records his con- 
verse with Boileau, Racine and probably Moliere, in the 
gardens of Versailles, and in the role of Polyphile celebrates 
his joy in all creation, natural and artificial: 

Volupte, volupte, qui fut jadis maitresse 
Du plus bel esprit de la Grece, 



J'aime le jeu, Fa-mow, les livres, la musique, 
La ville et la campagne, enfin tout . 

Jusqu' au sombre plaisir d'un coeur melancholique. 

Could a soul born for pleasure speak more plainly? It was 
probably Boileau who induced him to publish a first volume of 
Nouvelles en vers (1665), containing a translation of Ariosto's La 
Gioconda and a tale from Boccaccio. This was soon followed 
by a collection of Contes et Nouvelles, to which other collec- 
tions were added in the course of La Fontaine's life. The 
spontaneity, grace and vivacity of the verse were admired, 
but the defenders of morality protested rightly against the 
success of a book which made licentiousness attractive. La 
Fontaine replied in the name of art; and among the notables on 
his side was not only his patroness but also Mme de Sevigne. 
When the Duchesse de Bouillon became involved in the 
" affaire des poisons," La Fontaine transferred his allegiance 
to the Marquise de la Sabliere. Her hospitable and cultured 
spirit consoled him for the loss of other friends; just as it is 
said that on her retirement from the world she took three 
things with her: her cat, her dog and La Fontaine. Never was 
a spiritual relationship described better than in the famous 
Discours (see Bk. Ill, Ch. V) which La Fontaine addressed to 
her — hers is a world of 

Propos, agreables commerces, 
Ou le hasard fournit cent matieres diverses; 

Jusque-la qu'en votre entretien 
La bagatelle a part: le monde n'en croit rien. 

Laissons le monde et sa croyance. 

Mme de la Sabliere also inspired La Fontaine's inaugural 
speech before the French Academy. He had been elected in 
1683, but Louis XIV withheld his confirmation until that body 



302 MOLIERE AND LA FONTAINE 

had installed Boileau — to whom our poet had been preferred 
— and La Fontaine had given some assurance of reform. The 
last years of his life were passed under the roof of Hervart, 
maitre de requetes; here he died in 1695. Three days before 
his end he wrote in perfect candor to his friend Maucroix: 

Mourir n'est rien, mais songes-tu que je vais comparaitre devant 
Dieu? Tu sais comme j'ai vecu. 

One can view such a character only sympathetically. La Fon- 
taine was what the French call un bonhomme; unfit for the 
sterner duties of life, he was childlike, outspoken and likeable. 
He treated life, as he treated himself, " without a disguise." 
The only discipline he admitted was his art, and to it he 
paid unremitting homage. 

It was Mme de Bouillon who first called her favorite a fablier. 
By this epithet she recognized the born story-teller. La 

„. ^ ,_, Fontaine's canvases are not large; his imagination 
His Fables 

worked best in a small compass. In an earlier age 

he might have been a jongleur, regaling his Gallic listeners by the 

fireside of a tavern, during some wintry night. As it is, he polishes 

the esprit gaulois for the devotees of a salon. His Contes, as we 

have said, are strikingly indecent. But they were not written for 

prudes, and the skill with which the tales are handled is their 

most conspicuous element. On the other hand, they have 

neither the range nor the poetry of the Fables, in which genre 

La Fontaine is the greatest master since Aesop. 

The first six books of Fables appeared when La Fontaine 

was forty-seven (1668), and succeeding books, to the number of 

twelve, followed at intervals until 1680. As the poet says in 

his dedication to the Dauphin: 

Je chante les heros dont Esope est le pere. 

But to Nevelet's Mythologica Aesopica (1610 and 1660), on 
which he drew, he added Sanskrit apologues from Bidpai and 
Latin fables by Phaedrus and others. Besides, as we have 
seen in previous chapters, the " beast-epic " was no novelty 
to the French; although it is improbable that La Fontaine's 
memory of his French predecessors went back beyond Marot. 
Marot uses the Fable of the Lion and the Rat admirably in 



THE FABLES 303 

order to make a special plea ; La Fontaine draws a more general 
lesson and, in this particular case, contents himself with a few 
bold strokes of the brush. Otherwise, the method of the two 
poets is similar: a remarkable observation of detail, the ability 
to convey swiftly the humor of the situation, a vivid merging 
of the human and the animalistic. 

But it remained for La Fontaine to extract from the genre 
its full poetic value. His first step is to establish a balance 
between the subjective and the objective worlds, that of men 
and that of the animals. La Fontaine is careful to anthropo- 
morphize Nature only to the extent of maintaining his particular 
fiction. 

Tout parle dans mon ouvrage, et meme les poissons, 

he remarks, with a twinkle in his eye. Again, in Le Chene et le 
Roseau the Reed answers the condescending Oak with the as- 
surance of one who is humanly conscious of his position: 

Votre compassion . . . 
Part d'un bon naturel; mais quittez ce souci; 

then La Fontaine resumes the objective attitude; a storm sweeps 
in from the north; the Reed bends before it, but the Oak is up- 
rooted; and this final scene assumes epic proportions: 

si bien qu'il deracine 
Celui de qui la tete au ciel etait voisine, 
Et dont les pieds touchaient a l'empire des morts. 

In this way, the individual fables are miniature dramas of which 
one would not change a particle. La Cigale et la Fourmi 
tells the fate of the improvident; they need expect no pity: 
"Eh bien! dansez maintenant " is the Ant's merciless reply 
to the Grasshopper who chirred all summer. The Wolf, being 
stronger than the Lamb {Le Loup et I'Agneau) , needs no further 
justification than just this for his rapacity, since " la raison 
du plus fort est toujours la meilleure." On occasion La Fontaine 
could strike off as good maxims as La Rochefoucauld, to whom 
he more than once pays tribute. " The Frogs desiring a King " 
represent the stupidity of the masses; they ultimately get 
what they deserve: an oppressor. But La Fontaine is not al- 



304 MOLIERE AND LA FONTAINE 

ways in this cynical mood; he can be playful, joyous, reflective 
and even tender. The Cat teased by the Mice is judiciously 
taken as a " sage et discrete personne "; the Mice themselves 
are playfully termed "la gent trotte-menu "; the Wood-Cutter 
weighed down by life's cares evokes sympathy: 

Quel plaisir a-t-il eu depuis qu'il est au monde? 

Thus the method is to shift the interest from one point of the 
situation to another; to give us glimpses rather than full-tone 
pictures; to vary the metre with the mood; to strike off in a 
phrase' or even a word the essence of the matter. All this shows 
Classical balance and control. 

Another feature of the Fables is " style." La Fontaine had 
at his command immense technical resources. He knew French as 
few of his contemporaries did; his language is the French of 
the soil, rich and colorful, like that of the sixteenth century. 
Much of his vocabulary doubtless came to him from his ex- 
tensive reading: thus he calls the Cat, Raminogrobis, Grippe- 
minaud or Rodilard; the Stomach is Messer Gaster; the Lion 
— a certain one, at least — is a " parent de Caligula." Yet 
concision is La Fontaine's watchword, and the mot propre his 
goal. Why should the Crow eat a " cheese " and the Fox 
covet it? Did La Fontaine know nothing about natural 
history? Manifestly, he was no literalist but a poet, and to 
the poet the symbol is everything and the word only what it 
suggests according to the context. Thus his verse is a con- 
tinuous creation, not only in rich and suggestive detail but also 
in rhythmical variety and beauty. It is vers Wore in the sense 
merely that each Fable has its particular verse, each idea or 
mood its particular line — adapted, in all cases, to the thought 
to be expressed. Rut La Fontaine does not violate traditional 
metres, he invents no new ones, and his very freedom is the 
product of painstaking art and care. The fact is that he 
makes verse do what he intends — now it is gay and swift, 
now solemn and grave, but it is always poetic. 

Lastly, the philosophy of the Fables is that of Classicism 
in general, and of the libertins in particular. An epicurean 
by instinct, La Fontaine became a " realist " through experience. 
The " morals " of his Fables count for little. Far be it from 



LA FONTAINE'S PHILOSOPHY 305 

La Fontaine, with his bent for pleasure, to dogmatize on life. 
Much more important are the pictures he etches, the love of 
truth he reveals. Least of all were his books intended for little 
children. Again, Taine's idea that the Fables consciously 
satirize the monarchy of Louis XIV goes too far and would be 
one-sided, if it were true. Such a Fable as Les Animaux malades 
de la peste is a typical picture of the miscarriage of justice; 1 
the blame falls on the Ass because he is an " ass," and the 
concluding moral: 

Selon que vous serez puissant ou miserable, 
Les jugements de cour vous rendront blanc ou noir, 

applies as well to the police-courts as to the tribunal presided 
over by a king. Thus La Fontaine is an observer. He has 
few illusions; but he glorifies common sense. Happy are they 
who have tolerance and measure, who know that a " rat is no 
elephant," and who have learned that: 

Patience et longueur de temps 
Font plus que force ni que rage. 

As for himself, he wrote in the Discours d Mme de la Sabliere: 

La bagatelle, la science, 

Les chimeres, le rien, tout est bon; je soutiens 

Qu'il faut de tout aux entretiens. 

He extracted from life, as its essence, the joy and the humor 
of a spectacle, and these he incorporated in his perfect verse. 
Few poets, even among the French, have been better craftsmen. 






CHAPTER IV 
PASCAL AND RACINE 

Up to this point Classicism has offered us a finite universe 
in which " common sense " operates as the measure of all things. 
What cannot be reconciled with " common sense " is discarded. 
This is but an application of the Aristotelian Golden Rule, 
worked out in a rational, social milieu. With Pascal and 
Racine we enter a field of enlarged vision and perception. Thei 
torturing claims of " conscience " now make themselves heard ; 
and humanity is turned aside from its worldliness to be con- 
( fronted, in the case of Pascal, with the problem of the Infinite, 
and, in the case of Racine, with the problem of Evil. Such 
deepening of the spirit is due primarily to Jansenism, which 
we shall now consider briefly in its bearing on the century. 

Cornelius Jansen, bishop of Ypres, had died in 1638. Three 
years after his death appeared his treatise, entitled Augustinus, 
which advocated a return to the Christianity of 
St. Augustine, presented under the following cap- 
tions: (1) that " free-will " ceased with the fall of Adam; (2) 
that human nature is thus thoroughly depraved and can be re- 
deemed through no effort of its own; and (3) that redemption 
can come only through " grace." The position of Jansen is 
essentially that of Calvin, with the important difference that 
the authority of Rome is never questioned and that the mystery 
of the sacraments is reaffirmed. Thus Jansenism is not op- 
posed to Catholicism but only to those Catholics who had made 
salvation a path of roses, a chemin de velours. Such were, 
above all, the Jesuits. Following in the footsteps of Molina 
(1588), they had taken the stand that God renounces his 
omnipotence in so far as he allows humanity the power and 
privilege of saving itself. In short, the Jesuits maintained that 
man has the " free-will " necessary for salvation. 
! The person who gave the ideas of Jansen the impetus of his 

306 






JANSENISM 307 

personality was his friend, Jean de Hauranne, Abbe de Saint- 
Cyran. In 1636 he became directeur spirituel of Port-Royal- 
de-Paris, an institution with which the fortunes of Jansenism 
are intimately bound up. The older foundation was Port-Royal- 
des-Champs in the valley of the Chevreuse. Through the efforts 
of a member of the Arnauld family — called Mere Angelique — 
early in the century this convent underwent a religious reform, 
which not only affected the Arnaulds as a group but also at- 
tracted other people of station and influence. In 1626 the transfer 
was made to Paris, the original convent becoming a retreat to 
which men of distinction, known as solitaires, retired in order to 
lead a life of study and meditation. The intellectual activity 
of Port-Royal was considerable. It busied itself with the ques- 
tion of education, was receptive to the ideas of Descartes (at 
least, as regards " method " ) , and particularly fostered the 
study of Latin and Greek classics with the view of enriching 
" human nature " and redeeming it from itself. Thus Jan- 
senism gave its followers a cultural and scientific training 
which, aside from the moral discipline involved, is its greatest 
contribution to the age. If Descartes still inveighs against the 
" medieval " instruction he received at La Fleche, a Jesuit 
school, Racine can have only words of gratitude for his Jan- 
senist teachers. Among the educators of Port-Royal, three are 
especially noteworthy — Claude Lancelot, the main author of 
the well-known Grammaire generate et raisonnee (1660) ; 
Pierre Nicole, to whom more than to anyone else is due the 
Port-Royal Logique ou Vart de penser (1662) ; and, most im- 
portant of all, Antoine Arnauld, the author in 1643 of La 
frequente communion. 

This treatise fanned the controversy between Jesuits and Jan- 
senists into a bright flame. A great lady, the Princesse de 
Guemene, had been invited by Mme de Sable to a ball; she 
refused on the ground that having " communed " it behooved 
her, according to Saint-Cyran, to abstain from worldly pleasures. 
Mme de Sable consulted the Jesuits, who replied that the Com- 
munion is not an extraordinary event in our life but an aid or 
succor for the sinful ; the more freely it is taken, the better. The 
matter was not settled by Arnauld's treatise; nor were things 
improved when Innocent X condemned the Augustinus of 



308 PASCAL AND RACINE 

Jansen, and Arnauld took up its defence. Finally, in 1656, the 
quarrel reached a climax. Unable to uphold the Jansenist cause 
alone, and being rebuked also by the Sorbonne, Arnauld looked 
about him for a champion. So it happened that Pascal came to 
his rescue with the first Lettre a un "provincial, on January 23 
of that year. 

Nature gave Blaise Pascal a frail body and a singularly active 
and brilliant mind. He was born in Clermont-Ferrand (1623) 
as the youngest son of a distinguished famille de 
robe. In 1631 the family moved to Paris, where 
Pascal's father continued to instruct his son in languages and 
mathematics. For the latter science Blaise showed great apti- 
tude and while still a child wrote a book on Conic Sections. 
This was followed by experiments in atmospheric weight, con- 
ducted with much skill, and a treatise containing Nouvelles 
experiences touchant le vide (published in 1647). But over- 
study had the inevitable result of undermining his already weak 
physique; and becoming acquainted with the works of Jansen, 
Saint-Cyran and Arnauld, he had what is generally called his 
" first conversion," in which his entire family shared. 

In the case of Blaise, however, there was a brief respite in 
which he tasted the pleasures of the world. This occurred in 
1649, when the rest of the family went on a visit to Auvergne 
and Blaise remained in Paris. At that time the master of his 
thoughts was Montaigne, the skeptic — and his actual compan- 
ions were such worldlings as the Due de Roannez, the Chevalier 
de Mere and the libertin Miton. From them it is assumed that 
Pascal derived his sense of literary style, besides various 
of his philosophical ideas and the attitude which underlies the 
short essay Sur les Passions de V amour, if the work is really by 
Pascal's pen. Meanwhile, he appears to have kept alive his 
interest in science. He invented a counting-machine, worked 
out a hydraulic press, studied the question of probability in 
games of chance (a contact with Descartes), and anticipated 
to a certain extent the higher mathematics of calculus. Then 
came his final " conversion." 

Such events are always open to speculation. But whether we 
explain it by the accident in which his life was saved as by a 
miracle or account for it on a Freudian basis, the fact is that on 



THE PROVINCIAL LETTERS 309 

November 23, 1654, Pascal suffered the change of heart which 
made him definitely renounce the world and drove him into the 
arms of Port-Royal Thus it was that he came to place his 
great talent at the service of Arnauld in 1656. Besides the 
Provinciates, published at first anonymously and then under the 
pseudonym of Montalte, Pascal planned an Apology of the Chris- 
tian Religion, of which Pensees are presumably the stray 
fragments. They were found after, his death, among his papers; 
but for various reasons, among which was the fear that they 
might be unorthodox, a complete edition of them did not appear 
until 1844. In addition to their many excellences, the Pensees 
confirm the view as to their author's intense but keenly intel- 
lectual nature. His character w T as tried but not shaken by the 
experiences through which he had passed. We shall never know, 
of course, the part that physical illness played in his renuncia- 
tion of science. But that Pascal considered it as complete is 
apparent from the written words discovered on his dead body: 
" renonciation totale et douce" — " joie, joie, joie, pleurs de 
joie." He was only thirty-nine when he died in 1662. 

" Silence," said Pascal, " is the worst of persecutions; the saints 
never held their peace." The Lettres Provinciates show how 
" Les Lettres knowingly he made this assertion. They are eight - 
Provinciales " een j n numD er. The first three and the last three 
treat of Arnauld y s affair with the Sorbonne; the intervening 
twelve openly assail the moral philosophy of the Jesuits. Taken 
as a whole, they show us Pascal the ironist at his best; logic, 
subtlety and a sense of comedy are here placed at the service of 
a cause which, in spite of its emotional appeal, Pascal was com- 
pelled to defend with purely intellectual arms. In doing so, he 
created, so to speak, French controversial style. The subject 
of the Letters may have lost its interest today. But their 
reasoning is like the play of sunlight on a mountain brook; 
the effect is scintillating, vibrating and enchanting. Never 
was a theological question presented with greater charm. 
Having in the First Letter subtly confounded those who, with- 
out examination of the text, assert that the Augustinus con- 
tains the propositions which the Pope and the Sorbonne con- 
sidered heretical, Montalte (Pascal) — in his role of an amiably 
inquisitive layman — probes in the Second Letter into the 



310 PASCAL AND RACINE 

question of grace. The Jesuits affirm that divine grace is 
sufficient but they deny that it is efficacious. 

" To come to business, Father," says Montalte to his inter- 
locutor, "this grace given to all men is sufficient?" "Certainly," 
said he. "And yet it has no effect without efficacious grace?" 
" None whatever," he replied. " Then," returned I, " all have 
enough grace, and all do not have enough — the grace is sufficient 
in name, and insufficient in reality. On my word, Father, that 
is a very subtle doctrine." 

This shows the temper of Pascal's method. Obviously he is not 
fair. The one hope of safety for the Jansenists lay in rousing 
public indignation against the persecutors. Pascal was too 
astute to misquote his enemies, in fact, he is scrupulous in giving 
chapter and line of his victim's text. But he is sensational, 
and he does keep his reader's eye fixed on the most noto- 
rious casuist that the Jesuits possessed, the Spaniard Escobar. 
Many a biographer of Pascal has been disturbed by his hero's 
flat denial of any close connection with Port-Royal. Again, 
Pascal is technically correct inasmuch as he was not himself 
a solitaire. Yet most of these objections vanish when we con- 
sider the nobility of the Jansenist creed, the necessity of defend- 
ing that creed against an overwhelming group of powerful en- 
emies, and lastly Pascal's zealous nature. He was not only a 
thinker but also a stylist and a lyricist. Once started on a 
subject, he could not refrain from penetrating to its marrow. 
Several of his Letters cost him weeks of continuous labor; all 
were rewritten at least six times. When pressed for his Six- 
teenth Letter owing to the fact that the police were on the heels 
of his printer, he remarked: "This letter is long because I did 
not have time to make it shorter." 

Thus it was the Provinciates (named thus because ostensibly 
addressed to a reader in the provinces) that gave Pascal liter- 
"Les ary renown during his lifetime. Here was a work 

Pensees" combining the logic of Descartes with the insight 
and charm of a man of the world. Most men, Pascal thought, 
could be classified according to whether they had the one or the 
other quality — the esprit de geometrie or the esprit de finesse- 
It was characteristic of his own genius that he had both traits; 
and therefore the Letters won immediate recognition as a land- 



THE PENSEES 311 

mark in French prose. But while their subject is ephemeral, 
that of the Pensees has never-ending interest. 

Here again the approach to the problem — the defence of 
Christianity — is through the gateway of skepticism. Pascal 
the Pyrrhonist is little more than a seventeenth-century 
Montaigne, made perfect as to style. Man is irretrievably 
caught between the two Infinities — the macrocosm and the 
microcosm, the infinitely large and the infinitely small. 

Qu'est-ce que l'homme dans la nature? Un neant a Fegard de 
Tinfini, un tout a l'egard du neant, un milieu entre rien et tout. 

Que fera-t-il done, sinon d'apercevoir quelque apparence du 
milieu des choses, dans un desespoir eternel de connaitre ni leur 
principe ni leur fin? 

Furthermore, man is vain, hopelessly vain: 

Le nez de Cleopatre: s'il eut ete plus court, toute la face de la 
terre aurait ete changee. 1 

Notre propre interet est encore un merveilleux instrument pour 
nous crever les yeux agreablement. 

If these reflections betray the ideas of others, Pascal reassures 
us: " Do not say that I have said nothing new: the disposition 
of the matter is new. In playing tennis both use the same ball, 
but the one places it better." Certainly the metaphysical at- 
titude, the torture and pathos of speculation — le frisson meta- 
physique — is new, at all events in French ; and so is the in- 
ference that despite all his weakness man is yet a superior 
being : 

L'homme n'est qu'un roseau, le plus faible de la nature, mais 
e'est un roseau pensant. 

Moreover, there is intuition, the highest of our qualities: 

Nous connaissons la verite, non seulement par la raison, mais 
encore par le cceur. 

C'est le cceur qui sent Dieu, et non la raison. 

How then is truth to be attained? Only in one way — through 
union with God. The dissonance of human nature, our moral 

1 This is more obviously a reflection on the role of Chance in history. 



312 PASCAL AND RACINE 

depravity, the inability to see beyond the circuit of our own 
experience — all this is overcome in Jesus Christ. In Him we 
are made whole and perfect. 

Like most seekers of finality, Pascal can solve the problem 
of truth only by self-immolation. But he annihilates the ego — 
le moi hdissable, as he called it — in so far merely as it is 
egocentric, as its foibles and sophisms block the road to truth. 
He never gave up his confidence in man as a thinker nor in our 
superiority to the brute world of Nature. The acquisitions of 
culture he would not surrender — far from it. Saint-Evremond 
said that Jansenism is the preciosity of religion; an opinion to 
which we can in the main subscribe. 

Thus Pascal's Pensees are the expression of a great intelligence. 
Many of them have the austerity of a Hebrew prophecy; most 
of them have also a bewitching beauty of thought and expres- 
sion. They seem most modern when they are most abrupt and 
simple, as in flashes like : 

Condition de Thomme: inconstance, ennui, inquietude. 

No style could be more direct, no feeling more intense than 
Pascal's. The agony of his soul often gives to his phrase the 
force of an interjection. Yet the longer passages in the Pensees 
have a placid depth, a scientific objectivity, a rigor of logical 
structure, which show that the poet in Pascal was always sub- 
ordinate to the scientist. It is probable that Pascal saw deeper 
into the recesses of the human soul than any other French- 
man. It is certain that no Frenchman ever united feeling and 
intelligence into a greater expression of beauty. 

There is in Pascal a quality that reminds us of Milton; but 
Racine, the greatest dramatist in France after Moliere, has 

„ . been difficult for Anglo-Saxons to understand. Bred 

R3.CIH6 

in the Shakespearean tradition, they find him stilted 

and artificial, " with an incapacity for the finest original strokes 
of poetry," and " an almost unlimited capacity for writing 
from models " (Saintsbury) . It is needless to point out that such 
a view is thoroughly superficial. To be sure, Racine was em- 
inently a court poet; without the background of Versailles and 
Louis XIV his tragedies are unthinkable; his characters move 
across the stage in full-bottomed wigs and with peerless external 
manners; of his own Andromache, Racine remarked: 



RACINE'S LIFE 313 

J'ai cm me conformer . . . a I'idee que nous avons main- 
tenant de cette princesse. 

He was not interested in " local color," nor in that more modern 
fetish, " archeological detail." His was the task of interesting 
a court to which decorum was a necessity. But let the reader 
penetrate the shell of Racine's dramas, and he will behold an 
unmasking of characters, a penetration of hidden motives — 
in short, a truth to human nature, that is startling in its psy- 
chology. Thus, at the outset, it becomes clear why Racine realized 
the Classical ideal of art and nature united. Racine is in prac- 
tice what Boileau is in theory. To him truth and beauty are one; 
and as a consequence his dramas are swift, concentrated in 
action, taking life at a " crisis " — as Napoleon said — discard- 
ing whatever seems unessential, and thus achieving as complete 
a realization of a literary genre as seems possible. Shakespeare's 
plays, superior as they are in scope, are today difficult to per- 
form. On the other hand, Racine's conception of tragedy is still 
the model of what an acting-play should be. 

Jean Racine was a child of the Ile-de-France. He was born 
at La Ferte-Milon about the twenty-first of December, 1639. 
Racine's Losing both parents in childhood, he was placed 

Life at ten in the Jansenist college at Beauvais and at 

fifteen in the maison des Granges at Port-Royal, where Pierre 
Nicole taught him Latin and Lancelot taught him Greek. His 
early reading included the romance of Theagenes and Chariclea 
by Heliodorus, in which occurs the theme of adulterous love, 
and he delighted also in the " nature poetry " of the lovelorn 
Theophile de Viau and Tristan l'Ermite. If he was introspec- 
tive by nature, such contacts fostered his introspection. 

In 1658 he attended the College d'Harcourt in Paris and dwelt 
for a while with his cousin Nicolas Vitart at the house of the Due 
de Luynes. Vitart, who was both a Jansenist and an honnete 
homme, had an interest in literature and was liberal with his 
purse. Here Racine met La Fontaine and the Abbe Le Vasseur, 
the latter of whom introduced him to two of the popular ac- 
tresses of the day. Then his relatives became concerned and 
sent him to Uzes, in the south of France, to study theology under 
an uncle's supervision. The hope was that he would thus ob- 
tain a church benefice. From Uzes, Racine wrote letters full 



314 PASCAL AND RACINE 

of charm and grace to his friends in Paris. Already his style 
is singularly pure and precise, and as appears from other evi- 
dence, his reflections on Pindar, Homer, the Bible (especially 
the Book of Job) are interesting and original. The result, 
therefore, of Racine's education was three-fold: it developed 
his sensitive, artistic nature; it gave him a knowledge of Greek 
classics, including Euripides and Sophocles; and it led him 
to identify the Greek sense of fate with the Jansenist doctrine 
of original sin. 

In the autumn of 1662 Racine reappeared in Paris, having 
given up hope of an ecclesiastical preferment and determined 
to succeed as a writer. He began with a display of official verse, 
Sur la convalescence du Roi and La Renommee aux Muses, the 
latter of which, admirably expressed, won him the esteem of 
Boileau and, finally, the entree to the court. In 1664 Moliere 
played La Thebaide, Racine's first tragedy, at the Palais-Royal. 
The circle of the poet's friends was now complete; besides La 
Fontaine, Boileau, Moliere, it included Chapelle and Furetiere, 
their meetings occurring at such cabarets as the Mouton blanc, 
where the repasts served were not merely literary. 

The Thebaide is not a great play, though it had a momentary 
success. For its sources Racine drew on Euripides (The Phoe- 
nician Women) , Seneca and the Antigone of Rotrou. But where 
these were involved, Racine was simple, and his tendency to- 
wards unity of plot is quite apparent. Necessarily, at twenty- 
three, he showed the influence of the elder Corneille, which was 
again a factor in Racine's second play in 1665. But although 
the Alexandre is a heroic-comedy and contains such Cornelian 
rhetoric as: 

Je suis venu chercher la gloire et le danger, 

an evident reference to Louis XIV, it is clear that Racine is 
addressing a different public from that of his great predecessor. 
In the serious drama of the time heroics had been supplanted 
by love. This was due partly to the influence of the novel; 
more so, however, to the success of Thomas Corneille's Timocrate 
(1656), the most popular stage play of the century, and of the 
works of Philippe Quinault. Mediocre as Timocrate was artis- 
tically, it dramatized La Calprenede's Cleopdtre, and its languor- 



ANDROMAQUE 315 

ous hero soothed an audience grown weary of Cornelian grandeur. 
Similarly, Quinault's Stratonice (1660) approached opera in 
harmonious lyrism and in mere elegance of expression. From 
such works as these Racine was now to take his cue. Mean- 
while he had broken with Moliere, in a rather discreditable 
manner, by taking away from Moliere's troupe the Alexandre 
and giving it to the rival company of the Hotel de Bourgogne. 
The triumph of Andromaque (1667) is a parallel to that of 
the Cid. Love is the theme, but unlike his contemporaries 
Racine treats this subject dramatically and with 
"Andromaque" the utmost s i mp ii c it y . The plot turns on the 

maternal love of Andromache for her son: as Andromache 
causes Pyrrhus, jailor of her son and victim of her charms, 
to hope or despair, so Pyrrhus approaches or leaves Hermione, 
who in turn calls or repels Orestes. Orestes kills Pyrrhus, 
and Hermione, unable to live without him, hurls at his slayer 
the reproach: 

Ah! fallait-il en croire une amante insensee? 

whereupon Orestes goes mad on learning of her death. Racine 
took his material from the poets of antiquity (Homer, Euripides, 
Vergil) ; in the balancing of characters there is some similarity 
with the Cid; otherwise the drama is a stroke of genius — swift, 
powerful and beautifully expressed. " Pas un vers," says 
Lemaitre, " qui n'exprime, en mots rapides et forts comme des 
coups d'epee, les illusions, les souffrances, Pegoisme, la folie et 
la mechancete de ramour." 

Contemporary critics, however, were not all on Racine's side. 
Many of them still preferred the great Corneille and were not 
so indulgent even as Mme de Sevigne, who yielded " six reluc- 
tant tears " when she saw the play. Racine, always irritable, 
replied with sarcasm and invective. Then he turneH aside to 
produce his one comedy, Les Plaideurs (1668). In part an 
imitation of The Wasps of Aristophanes but especially a rol- 
licking satire of the antiquated Paris law-courts, this comedy 
was coldly received until Louis XIV saw it and laughed, when 
suddenly all Paris discovered its wit and charm. Racine's 
next tragedy, Britannicus (1669), was a direct challenge to 
the admirers of Corneille. 



316 PASCAL AND RACINE 

As he himself as said (see the prefaces to the play), Racine 
here offers us a historical play, bereft of unnecessary inci- 
dents, conforming absolutely to the unities, and 

n anmcus concen ^ ra t e d into one powerful action: the un- 
chaining of the brute in the character of Nero. The situation, 
drawn from the Annals of Tacitus, is political, and it is 
domestic; Versailles might well take heed. Nero, still young 
enough to fear his mother Agrippina (who has committed every 
crime for his sake) and his "tutor" Burrhus, is tempted by 
the innocence of Junia, betrothed to Britannicus. He knows 
the evil of such a passion and confesses it to himself: 

Et cette vertu, si nouvelle a la cour, 
Dont la perseverance irrite mon amour. 

During three acts he hesitates. In the fourth, Agrippina makes 
a last attempt to bend him to her maternal will. Narcissus, 
Nero's depraved counselor, shatters all opposition: Britannicus 
is poisoned, Narcissus is slain by Junia, who dies by her own 
hand, while Agrippina foretells the burning of Rome. 

It is quite clear that the success of Britannicus fell below 
Racine's expectations. Louis XIV might be charmed and thus 
again show his insight and magnanimity; Saint- 
Evremond reports that the public considered the 
idea of the play noire et horrible. In any case, the poet's next 
production, Berenice (1670), is so devoid of physical action 
or violence as to be a tragedy only by implication. It is, 
indeed, the extreme of what Racine thought a tragedy might 
be; namely, a dramatic elegy. 

It is said that Henrietta of England, Duchess of Orleans, 
suggested the subject of Berenice independently to Corneille 
and to Racine (see above, Bk. Ill, Ch. IV) . She may even, as 
Voltaire affirms, have hinted to Racine that Louis XIV would 
be pleased with a situation which would recall his youthful 
affection for Marie Mancini. However that may be, this time 
Racine turned six words of the historian Suetonius — Titus 
reginam Berenicen dimisit invitus invitam — into a five-act 
drama. As regards form it was Racine's greatest triumph; the 
Abbe d'Aubignac's rules were amply vindicated. Yet beneath the 
surface of its external beauty, Berenice contains a tremendous 



PHEDRE 317 

struggle: the renunciation of each other by two royal lovers for 
reasons of state. Titus gives up Berenice because the inexorable 
laws of Rome forbid an emperor to marry a foreigner. Thus 
in the .little room of the palace, where the scene is laid, the 
destinies of empires are decided and the tragedy of royalty — 
the greatest tragedy, that of the spirit — is laid bare. Can 
there be any doubt of the realism of this drama in such an age 
as Racine's? 

If Berenice is Roman, Bajazet (1672) is Oriental not only in 
subject but also in its display of violence. This drama has been 
called the French Othello; and it may be that its heroine, Roxane, 
was as inscrutable to the French seventeenth century as the Moor 
of Venice was to the age of Shakespeare (Wright) . At all events, 
a drama of the seraglio had its interest after Moliere's Bourgeois 
gentilhomme (where the Grand Turc was burlesqued), while 
Racine's treatment of the Vizier Acomat shows that he could 
depict a thoroughly virile character. Then followed Mithridate 
(1673) and Iphigenie, the latter of which was presented at Ver- 
sailles in 1674. 

Mithridate is again characterized by the submergence of the 
political side of the drama — the purely external part — to the 
love affair of the hero with Monime, the incorporation of 
feminine chastity, fidelity and courage. With Iphigenie Racine 
returns to the Greeks. No play of Racine's is more regal. 
Yet the French Iphigenia is a pale reflex of Euripides' national 
heroine: shie loves Achilles, and death means to her the sacrifice 
of that love; just as Eriphile, Racine's own creation, is the 
voice of sensual passion, leaving ruin in her path, destined to 
be Iphigenia's substitute in death and uttering phrases of 
haunting beauty: 

Je sentis le reproche expirer dans ma bouche. 



J'oubliai ma colere et ne sus que pleurer. 

This brings us to a culmination in Racine's career. Phedre I 

(1677), his masterpiece, led to his retirement as a writer for the \ 

stage at the age of thirty-nine. Could anything 

be more Hramatic? Unless it be the conflict of 

the tragic motives that form the basis of the play itself. 

Phedre is a complete recast of the Euripidean Hippolytos. 



318 PASCAL AND RACINE 

Racine's first and most significant change is the emphasis he 
places upon the heroine. The chaste Hippolytos becomes, so 
to speak, a sighing marquis of Louis' court, whereas Phaedra, 
the most powerful woman's role in all French drama — and 
destin/ed by Racine for the actress La Champmesle — is a 
female Nero; but with one important difference: she has a 
searching, Jansenist conscience. In other words, Phedre is 
not only a tragedy of jealousy but also one of remorse: it is 
a picture of sinning and suffering humanity driven by fate to 
its doom. And yet this Christian Phaedra, the victim of 

Venus toute entiere a sa proie attachee, 

remains intrinsically Greek. Never does Racine allow us to 
forget her origin. She is the daughter of Minos and Pasiphae 
and the granddaughter of the Sun. Driven to bay, she cries out: 

Miserable! et je vis! et je soutiens la vue 
De ce sacre soleil dont je suis descendue! 
J'ai pour aieul le pere et le maitre des dieux; 
Le ciel, tout Tunivers est plein de mes aieux. 

This harmonizing of civilizations, Greek, Christian and French, 
is the pinnacle of Classicism, j As a play, Phedre may lack the 
fine proportion of Andromaque, but as an expression of passion 
on a grand scale it is probably unsurpassed in literature. 

Whatever may have been the actual cause, the poet's retire- 
ment was opportune. His sensitive nature, together with his 
vanity as a successful playwright, had made him scores of en- 
emies. The Duchess of Bourbon, learning that he was busy on 
Phedre, had induced Pradon — a second-rater — to oppose Racine 
with a play on the same subject. Determined to have her favorite 
succeed and Racine fail, she bought up the seats in two theaters 
(see Boileau's Sevfenth Epistle), and during six successive eve- 
nings packed the one with applauding spectators and left the 
other empty except for a handful of hissers. Such an intrigue 
had its undoubted effect. In addition, Racine's own play 
might make him consider. Was he not, in the theme of 
Phedre, lending a hand to acts of violence? Mme de Brin- 
villiers had recently been executed for poisoning; other crimes 
no less sinister were gossiped about; Racine's own name was 



ATHALIE 319 

unfavorably associated with the sudden death of the actress 
Mile Du Pare. 

/Yet the Jansenists saw in Phedre signs of contrition on Racine's 
part. At least the play did not mince Phaedra's guilt; she could 
be considered only as a pagan woman lacking in God's grace. 
Thus the Jansenists welcomed Racine's return to their fold. 
On their advice he married a woman who knew nothing of the 
stage, and devoted himself to bringing up a family. He had long 
since become a member of the Academy. This relationship led 
him to maintain an external interest in literature. Moreover, 
/he did not break with the court, and we find him, as historiog- 
rapher to the King, journeying in the trail of Louis' armies. 

Finally, after twelve years of dramatic silence, he composed 
at the behest of Mme de Maintenon his Biblical tragedy of 
"Esther" and Esther (1688-1689). Intended for the schoolgirls 
" Atnalie " of Saint-Cyr, it was there performed by the daugh- 
ters of the nobility themselves before the brilliant and ad- 
miring guests of Louis. The beauty of Esther lies in the 
melody of its verse and its power as a spectacle. Mme de 
Maintenon doubtless saw in the portrayal of the Jewish queen 
a reference to her own fortunes. Then came Athalie (1691) — 
the last of Racine's plays and as regards form (choruses, recits, 
and the like) one of his masterpieces. Here the protagonist 
is God; the plot relates how the child Joash triumphs over his 
enemies — the enemies of church and state — including the 
frenzied and heretical Athaliah. But Mme de Maintenon 
feared the excitement such a play might cause at Saint-Cyr, 
and she had the performance given privately, without scenery 
and without costumes; so that no one except Boileau recognized 
its greatness during Racine's lifetime. The first presentation 
of Athalie to a Parisian public was in 1716. 

The dramatic situation is not so intense in Athalie as in 
Racine's secular tragedies. The action is lyrical, much as in 
the Old French mystere. Yet nowhere in Racine's works is his 
power as an artist more apparent. His choruses, modeled on 
the Greek drama, heighten and relieve the action. His verse 
was never so expressive, so well suited to the solemnity of his 
theme, so freely and exquisitely managed. Moreover, the setting, 
laid in the temple at Jerusalem, enters into the verse and gives to 



320 PASCAL AND RACINE 

the drama an impressive grandeur which it would be hard to 
match. If Phedre is Racine's greatest tragedy, Athalie is his 
most perfect dramatic poem. 

With the " failure " of Athalie Racine's poetic career ends. 
A slight rebuff from the King may have hastened his death. 
His Jansenism was not eyed with favor, and when he appealed 
to Louis to relieve France of the burden of war, (we remember 
that Corneille had made a similar request) the King was visibly 
displeased. Before Mme de Maintenon could dispel the mis- 
understanding, Racine had died in April, 1699, in his sixtieth 
year. 

As we have observed, Racine's works are important in two 
respects: as drama and as poetry. As a writer of stage-plays 
Racine's Art Racine aims primarily at one thing; namely, at 
and Style dramatic effect. What is not essential to the dra- 
matic conflict he discards, and what is lacking to it he adds. Thus 
he is not historical in the Cornelian sense; for he alters history 
in behalf of simplicity, and he will add a non-historical character 
in order to strengthen the plot. Peu $ incidents et peu de matiere 
is his own statement of his aim. Thus his plays have verisi- 
militude: they are true to life even when they are not true to 
fact. It is extraordinary, as in the case of Berenice, how he 
discerns the drama that lurks in a few words of some ancient 
poet or historian. The power to visualize this into an acting 
play of universal application is the greatest element in his genius. 
Lemaitre, who has written the best book on Racine, calls this 
quality invention, and it is safe to say that no poet ever had 
more of it. 

Consequently, striving as he does for concentration, it is not 
difficult for Racine to observe the unities. Having chosen the 
" crisis " which he wishes to present, Racine leads up to it in his 
first two and solves it in his last two acts, thus determining his 
plot. This settled, the unity of place is of no great importance: 
either the place is an apartment in a palace (which might just 
as well be in Versailles as in Greece) , or it may be shifted about 
somewhat, as Racine suggests in the preface to Esther, for the 
amusement of the spectators. As for the unity of time, this is 
coincident with the " crisis " and the events which immediately 
precede and follow it. In all respects, Racine's plays had the 



RACINE'S STYLE 321 

added advantage of obeying the Classical rules as outlined by 
d'Aubignac and Boileau. 

As a poet Racine has two preeminent qualities: a strongly 
lyrical vein and an imaginative and harmonious style. Racine 
is a great psychologist. But his idea of character is of something 
dark and subtle. He turns our gaze on the mysteries of the 
heart, not like Corneille on the triumphs of the reason and the 
wHIT The result is that the larger part in his dramas is played 
by women. In Andromaque, Berenice, Bajazet, Iphigenie and 
Phedre it is always a woman who dominates the action. The 
protagonist of Britarmicus is Nero, but he is swayed by love and 
not primarily by the desire of power, like the more masculine 
Shakespearean heroes. While, therefore, Racine's field is re- 
stricted, he treats love in all of its varieties, from passion to 
devotion, including jealousy, coquetry, tenderness and rapture. 
It is Racine's knowledge of Greek, in which respect he is unique 
among les grands classiques, that accounts for the creative 
quality of his style. Paraphrasing Sainte-Beuve, Lemaitre 
says: " il rase la prose, mais avec des ailes." Racine's similes 
and metaphors are simple, direct, inevitable; he does not seek 
the out-of-the-way or the unexpected. Orestes, hounded by 
fate, sums up his misery in the phrase: 

J'ai mendie la mort chez des peuples cruels; 

Berenice expresses her scorn of flatterers in the words: 

Je fuis de leurs respects V inutile longueur. 

To suggest the silence of the night by the sea-shore, there is 
the line: 

Mais tout dort, et Tarmee, et les vents, et Neptune; 

and the omnipotence of God crashes upon the ear in the al- 
literation of: 

Et du haut de son trone interroge les rois. 

In spite of a rather small vocabulary, Racine understood the 
range of French verse to perfection. He can pass from sustained 
utterance to pure familiarity; he can be ironic and sublime. 
In short, his style matches his thought and gives to French verse 
a precise beauty and an undying splendor. / 

/ 



322 PASCAL AND RACINE 

Compared to his contemporaries Racine is like an oasis in 
a desert. Pradon imitated Racine but is remembered only 
by his opposition to Racine in the matter of Phedre. Quinault 
and Thomas Corneille had of course been entirely outdistanced. 
Thus on Racine's retirement the theater was left without a 
great leader. Minor dramatists there were: Chancel, Longpierre, 
La Fosse. Campistron, in particular, singled out Racine's weaker 
qualities for imitation. The Comedie frangaise had been founded 
in 1680, but its repertory consisted mainly of the plays of 
Corneille, Rotrou and Racine. Thus the curtain falls on the 
theater of the century without producing another great name. 



CHAPTER V 
BOILEAU AND BOSSUET 

Boileau is the Nestor of French Classicism. His sterling 
character reveals itself in two respects: first, as a judicial rather 
than an imaginative critic, and, secondly, as a sympathetic friend 
of the great writers of the age. 

Common sense is again the guiding principle of all his work. 
It lies at the root of the Art poetique (1674), of the doctrine 
that grounded his criticism in " la haine d'un sot livre " and 
caused him to make literature consist in " true thoughts and just 
expressions.' 7 Common sense, in its most intellectual aspects, 
inspired the attacks of his Satires and all his protests against 
extravagances. It divides his minor works into so many ex- 
coriations of the varieties of human folly. It made Boileau, 
in his eyes of extremists, " reason incarnate." Common sense 
is the distinctive mark of the man in his private life and his 
relations with other men. 

Nicolas Boileau, known to his contemporaries as Despreaux, 
was born at Paris in 1636 — the year of the C id — and lived 
Boileau's there, until his death in 1711, the prudent career of 
Llfe a confirmed bachelor. He was " bourgeois " by 

descent, breeding and disposition. His two brothers, like him- 
self, had strongly marked leanings toward satire. Nicolas had 
a rather narrow youth and his views of country life amounted 
to no more than glimpses: two facts which help to explain the 
lack of feeling in his poetry. His education must have given 
him a knowledge of Latin and Greek and an esteem for polite 
literature; he shows early some taste for theology and consider- 
able distaste for the law, the profession from which so many 
French writers have reacted into letters. 

When Boileau reacted, at the age of twenty-one, he displayed 
his balance in refusing to alter forthwith his moderate manner 

323 



324 BOILEAU AND BOSSUET 

of life. It was the death of his father that had left him free for 
poetry, and we shortly find him cultivating the muses with an 
illustrious body of friends. 

Chief among these was the celebrated trio — Racine, Moliere, 
La Fontaine — whose early work Boileau did so much to form, 
and whose fame he greatly helped to establish. If he represents 
the " defense " of Classicism, they are its " illustration." But 
this early association was marked less by dogma than by en- 
thusiasm. We have previously mentioned (Ch. IV) their meet- 
ings at the Mouton blanc and similar cabarets. To Racine 
especially Boileau's friendship was helpful. He acted as a 
damper to the dramatist's temperamental outbursts, and he 
recognized the merit of Phedre in the striking appraisal: 

la douleur vertueuse 
De Phedre malgre soi perfide, incestueuse. 

On the whole, Boileau's tastes ran more to the society of men 
than to that of women, though we see him consorting with La 
Champmesle, Racine's actress-friend, and with the beautiful 
and brilliant Ninon de Lenclos. 

He began publication with Les Satires in 1666. Already the 
way to success had been paved by their circulation in manu- 
script and by readings before distinguished auditors. But he 
was not an assiduous frequenter of " salons "; as a courtier, when 
his fame had spread, he paid the usual compliments to Louis XIV, 
without losing his self-respect and independence. Boileau and 
Racine were both historiographers to the King, and in this ca- 
pacity they went campaigning — as we have seen — doubtless 
to the amusement of the military men. Neither was at home on 
horseback or in the field; yet Louis XIV was satisfied with 
Boileau's efforts and insisted on his being made an Academician 
(Ch. III). The Art poetique had preceded Boileau's election, 
but the enlightened authority of Louis was of more immediate 
effect on the Academy than was the celebrated poem. 

About 1677 Boileau was taken up by a "grand seigneur," De 
Lamoignon, who appears in the mock-epic called Le Lutrin, and 
who gathered at his mansion the more thoughtful society of 
that time. In this setting the critic felt at ease, though he was 
never a brilliant conversationalist. The latter part of his life 



BOILEAU'S WORKS 325 

was spent more and more in retirement, clouded by two serious 
quarrels: the one with the Jesuits in behalf of Arnauld, Pascal's 
friend ; the other with Charles Perrault in behalf of the Ancients 
(see Part III, Bk. I, Ch. I) . As an old man, Boileau lost the use 
of his voice, and this together with other infirmities soured his 
disposition. He lived well into the new century, but his work 
is indissolubly connected with the Age of Louis XIV. 

Thus Boileau was a French bourgeois to the core. His idea 
of human nature — 

Etudiez la cour et connaissez la ville — 

is that of his period in general; it looks neither back of Ver- 
sailles and Paris nor beyond them. He was a Parisian as 
Dickens was a Cockney, each the product and the expression 
of his universe. But Boileau was a prudent and sensible citizen. 
He had plain habits, lived in a simple and straightforward way, 
and was constant to his friends and principles. His respect for 
letters prevented him from being a hack or accepting any gall- 
ing patronage. " Reason " even made him speak the truth to 
Louis about the latter's verses and tastes. He was not expansive 
or emotional. But he warms to the attack, and his best work 
is that in which his common-sense aesthetics are at stake. If 
literature is a criticism of life, Boileau's life was a criticism 
of literature. 

We may follow Sainte-Beuve in dividing Boileau's work into 
three periods: that of the early Satires, during the sixties, a 
Boileau's vigorous and youthful phase; the next decade, 
Works when the critic assumes the part of a " legislator 

of Parnassus," writing the Art poetique, the mellower Satires 
and most of the Lutrin; and, finally, the period of his weakest 
efforts in satire and epistle, when his inspiration is disturbed by 
the defense of Jansenism and the quarrel with Perrault. 

Of the two elements, satire and criticism, it is hard to say 
which predominates in Boileau's work. Frequently they are 
coordinated. But certainly much of his writing, besides that 
labelled " satire," is satiric in idea and execution. Several of 
the Epitres — modeled on those of Horace — contain impatient 
indictments of human folly. The best of these are the Seventh 
Epistle (to Racine) and the Ninth, which mirrors Boileau's view 



326 BOILEAU AND BOSSUET 

of his own calling. The mock-heroic called Le Lutrin, in the 
style of Tassoni's Secchia rapita and Pope's Rape of the Lock, 
narrates a theological dispute about a reading desk in the Sainte- 
Chapelle. Here the satire rallies the clergy for their sloth and 
ease, while mimicking in burlesque the artifices of various ancient 
and modern epics. The poem is notable for its grace and wit, 
qualities which find an even more amusing expression in Boileau's 
Les Hews de roman. This is a prose dialogue, in the manner of 
Lucian, where the personages in the romances of La Calprenede 
and Mile de Scudery file before the judges of Hades, to give 
themselves away by their stilted and ridiculous conversation. 
Ridicule, then, is the acid test which Boileau constantly applies. 
This quality appears to the best advantage in the Satires proper. 
Here Boileau, imitating Horace and Juvenal, transmutes into 
Parisian terms the perennial violations of le bon sens. To quote 
his own words: 

Des sottises du temps je compose mon fiel. 

The Satires are of two classes, general and literary. Boileau 
expresses the folly of gluttony in the Third Satire; of certain 
types (the pedant, the miser, the gallant, and so on) in the 
Fourth; of false nobility in the Fifth; of unreasonable desires 
and ambitions in the Eighth; of women in the Tenth. In the 
Seventh and the famous Ninth he states his views concerning 
the social value of satire; and the Second, addressed to Moliere, 
discusses the discord between " la rime et la raison " which it 
was Boileau's endeavor to solve. 

But the Satires also constitute a polemic. Many of their shafts 
are aimed at the extreme fashions then in repute, which Boileau 
did much to mitigate if not banish. Thus he excoriates the epic- 
writing school of Chapelain; the feminizing romancers and the 
precieuses; the writers of " conceits " and pointes, and, finally, 
those who burlesque great works of art, like Scarron and his 
Virgile travesti. All these faults and foibles of the time are 
scored by Boileau in dozens of passages. Thereupon, having 
accomplished the work of destruction, the theorist in Boileau 
turns to erect the working code of Classicism. 

The manner in which Boileau crystallizes the Classical dogma 
(see Ch. I) will best appear from an analysis of the Art poetique. 



THE ART POETIQUE 327 

The first canto deals with the poet's vocation and the qualities 
of literary composition. The vocation must be founded in 
The "Art nature, since the poet is born rather than made, 
poetique " an( } na ture also disposes him to the kind of poetry 
that he should undertake. This conventional tribute to Pegasus 
having been paid, reason steps iiTand directs the remainder of 
the canto: 

Aimez done la raison: que tou jours vos ecrits 
Empruntent d'elle seule et leur lustre et leur prix. 

Let there be no " mad inspiration/' because to the Classicist 
imagination is inferior to reason. The latter principle is now 
made to control, in detail, such necessary poetic qualities as 
inevitability in expression, variety, noble rather than burlesque 
language, clearness and purity, polish and order, the rules of 
versification and harmony. 

Thus good sense becomes the arbiter of art, and it is primarily 
with the art of versification that Boileau is concerned. He 
interposes a biased sketch of French poetry that emphasizes 
this attitude. There was nothing of significance before Malherbe: 

Enfin Malherbe vint, et, le premier en France, 
Fit sentir dans les vers une juste cadence, 
D'un mot mis en sa place enseigna le pouvoir, 
Et reduisit la muse aux regies du devoir. 

The last line states the chief defect, not only of Malherbe, but 
of Boileau himself and of the whole trend of the Classical theory. 
Malherbe is praised, not as the first poet, but as the first 
harmonious versifier. 

The second canto takes up the minor Classic genres: the idyll 
or eclogue, the elegy, the ode, the sonnet and the epigram. 
These are considered, principally on the authority of the ancients, 
as the most acceptable forms, and each is treated with reference 
to its special style and aptitudes. The Old French forms are 
condemned in the name of " good sense and art," while satire, 
both ancient and modern, is recommended as a weapon of truth. 
The third canto, in its treatment of tragedy, epic and comedy, 
instances Boileau's general indebtedness to the theories springing 
from Horace and Aristotle. The tragic writer must strive for a 



328 BOILEAU AND BOSSUET 

" gentle terror " and a " charming pity/' by force of passion 
rather than of reasoning. But the external rules of reason must 
nevertheless be observed; especially — 

Qu'en un lieu, qu'en un jour, un seul fait accompli 
Tienne jusqu'a la fin le theatre rempli. 

Boileau admits thaT 

Le vrai peut quelquefois n'etre pas vraisemblable; 

in which case, however, the probable rather than the actual/' 
truth must be told. As we have seen, the Renaissance had placed 
a momentous stress on verisimilitude, of which the theater is 
the stronghold — and this idea Boileau repeats. He then gives 
due importance to other elements of tragedy, such as the recital 
of events, the climactic rise and the sudden catastrophe — in 
short, " crisis action." Love, he says, is now the main interest, 
but it must be truly depicted and should seem an amiable weak- 
ness ; above all — and here we hear the voice of decorum — each 
age and each person must keep the " proper character " in action 
and in language; for 

La scene demande une exacte raison. 

The section on the epic is interesting mainly as showing that 
the hope for a great modern French epic poem was not yet dead. 
Boileau holds by the Iliad and the Aeneid as standards. In 
ruling out the use of Christian mythology he condemns Tasso 
and, quite unawares, Milton, as well as his more usual butts, 
the small fry of epic-writers of the time. 

Comedy, for the Classical generalizer, again tends to portraits 
and types. In order to paint them, 

Que la nature done soit votre etude unique. 

She is the great portrait-painter. Study of nature — in town 
and court — is what makes the excellence of Moliere, whenever 
he does not dip, unworthily, into farce. There should be no 
mixture of tragedy and comedy: the Classicist abhors any me- 
lange des genres. /Let reason guide the comic action and re- 
frain from jests at the expense of le bon sens. 

The fourth canto consists mainly of thrusts at Claude Perrault 
and of general advice to poets as representative men. 



BOILEAU AS CRITIC 329 

The Art poetique is, in its very limitations, a most important 
document. It sums up, for the seventeenth century, the literary 
ideals which it helps to promulgate throughout the eighteenth. 
Its narrowness of range was broad for that time, and what it 
lacks in range it has in thoroughness and polish. If we add a 
few points from the Ninth Epistle and mention one general 
underlying inspiration, we have practically the whole of Boileau's 
doctrine. 

The Epistle in question lays down categorically that 

Rien n'est beau que le vrai . . . 

This is intended to rule out disordered fancy, but it operates 
also as an argument against sovereign imagination. It tends 
to make logical truth the sole foundation of art. The Epistle 
continues : 

Mais la nature est vraie . . . 

The material for imitation then is nature, and properly human 
nature, according to types. But nature should be followed in 
a broad way, not specialized or localized, adapted rather for 
universal appeal. The guide in this matter of just imitation 
is again reason. 

Such are the outlines of Boileau's " civilized " program. In 
it he again and again pays homage to the ancients, not because 
they are the ancients but rather as the models in the imitation 
of universal nature. Thus he unfurls the Classical banner, under 
which, championing the geniuses of his age, he fought against 
the lesser writers — who were mostly hostile to his applications 
of truth, nature and reason. As a critic, he is the successor of 
Malherbe, whose precepts he elevates and broadens. He is the 
first great author to insist upon the importance of " taste " 
(le gout), which in the eighteenth century becomes a point of 
frequent discussion. Underlying his thought is the conviction 
that the great work of art is always simple, truthful and intelli- 
gible. Thus he has an understanding of the eternal human 
values, lifted above time and place. Accordingly, his main 
critical judgments have been strikingly in agreement with those 
of posterity. 

At the same time, Boileau is not a creative critic. In his 



330 BOILEAU AND BOSSUET 

Satires aione does he sound an individual note — that of the 
concrete and picturesque detail : 

J'appelle un chat un chat et Rolet un fripon. 

He is not a profound psychological observer, a moraliste, like 
Pascal or La Rochefoucauld; he lacked the temperament for 
such profundity. Save in the Art poetique, he shuns the abstract 
style, which he frequently satirizes. He cannot depict the inner 
world of sentiment, or of subjective ideas and impressions. 

At his best, then, he is the lawgiver of Classicism. He knew 
and formulated its technique. The balanced Alexandrines of 
the Art poetique, its fixed divisions, its terse epigrammatic lines, 
recalling those of Pope — who was Boileau's greatest imitator — 
its clear and smooth finish, are evidence of his sense of Classical 
harmony. But again like Malherbe, he achieved these results 
only through effort. His early Satires, in particular, show want 
of ease and suggest the difficulties with rime of which he com- 
plains in addressing Moliere. But he overcame this handicap, 
and his middle period proves that Jie was as thoroughly Classical 
in his style as in his doctrine. Thus the Parisian bourgeois 
vindicated his position as the guardian of Classical culture. 

If Boileau was the defender of authority in literature, Bossuet 
was its evangelist in religion. No one has ever preached a re- 
actionary program more eloquently than he, nor, be 
it said in his honor, with greater sincerity. A devout 
Catholic, he was not what we should call an original thinker; he 
defined a heretic as " celui qui a une opinion" For this reason 
alone it is difficult to agree with Nisard and Brunetiere, who 
regard Bossuet as entirely representative of Louis XIV's time. 
But he had a seductive personality, a great intelligence — placed 
in the service of a high moral idea — and he treated vital ques- 
tions with the simple seriousness of a really great soul. 

Jacques-Benigne Bossuet, born at Dijon (Burgundy) in 1627, 
came of a family of sturdy magistrates. Educated by the Jesuits 
in the two antiquities, Hebrew and Graeco-Roman, he was sent 
to Paris to complete his studies at the College de Navarre, his 
subjects being philosophy and theology. At twenty- four he be- 
came a Doctor of the Sorbonne and was soon made archdeacon 
of Metz, having previously declined the social allurements which 



BOSSUET'S LIFE 331 

Paris offered to his talents. He remained at Metz until 1659, 
combatting Protestants and Jews and fortifying himself generally 
in his vocation. But the influence of Saint Vincent de Paul, 
whose natural Christian charity Bossuet admired, brought him 
back to the capital, where during ten years his fame as an 
orator grew until it reached the purlieus of the court. A funeral 
oration, now lost, on Anne of Austria is of this period in his 
career. 

In 1669 he was appointed bishop of Condom, a small town 
of southern France. But his nomination as tutor to the Dauphin 
made him resign his bishopric and devote himself, with character- 
istic zeal, to forming the mind of a pupil which, however dull 



and unappreciative, might some day rule the world. To this 



endeavor we owe several of Bossuet's greatest works, such as: 
the Traite de la connaissance de Dieu, the Politique tiree de 
VEcriture sainte and the famous Discours sur I'histoire univer- 
selle (begun in 1678). While these works failed of their im- 
mediate purpose — the Dauphin having no brain to instruct — 
they are the basis of Bossuet's philosophy and they serve as an 
index to both the epoch and the man. Absolute monarchy could 
have no other historian than a theologian: one who would see 
in the established order a foreordainment of God. At the same 
time, Bossuet is no flatterer — he lauded the monarchy, but he 
lauded it as an obligation and a trust, and he spared no pains 
to make clear the terrific duties that weigh down a king. Bossuet's 
appeal is neither overbearing nor servile; it is psychologically 
true and to the point; it shows his good sense and his justesse 
d'esprit. Finally, it reveals his courage. 

He was then elected to the Academy and, in 1681, to the 
bishopric of Meaux. Meantime he had preached funeral sermons 
on the deaths of Henrietta of France and Henrietta of England 

— to be followed later by orations on Marie-Therese, the Grand 
Conde and Mile de la Valliere. When the clergy of France met 
in 1682 it was Bossuet who opened the assembly with an ex- 
hortation on the unity of the church, and who by force of argu- 
ment won for the Gallican Church the liberty to manage its own 
affairs and to pronounce itself on the question of infallibility. 

His last years were crowded by disputes with the Protestants 

— the Histoire des variations des eglises protestantes appearing 



• 



332 BOILEAU AND BOSSUET 

in 1688 — by a controversy with Fenelon over the heresy of 
Quietism, by a famous pronouncement against the subjects 
treated on the stage, and by a crushing indictment of the views 
of Richard Simon, a higher critic of the Bible. He died in 1704 
after a life of continuous toil and combat. 

The major qualities of Bossuet are his probity and his sense 
of reality. He had little vanity and almost no personal ambition. 
He did not seek literary glory, and if he has splendor and per- 
fection of form he used them as instruments to win to his cause 
a world that no other method could reach. But if poets are born, 
so are orators; and the youthful Bossuet addressing the Hotel 
de Rambouillet close to midnight elicited from Voiture the 
remark: " I have never heard anyone preach so early or so late." 
He had a mind that was serene and self-possessed, which in the 
course of time he stored with information on philosophy, physi- 
ology, history, archeology and even drama; but again his mind 
was intense rather than far-seeing, fixed on one point — the gran- 
deur and glory of God as reflected by the grandeur and glory 
of Louis XIV. 

Bossuet's works fall into three groups: the Sermons, especially 
the funeral orations; the works intended for the instruction 
Bossuet's of the Dauphin; and the controversial writings. It 
Works must not be forgotten that preaching was in low 

estate when Bossuet began. The pulpit style of the Jesuits was 
traditionally florid and stilted. Saint Frangois de Sales had 
socialized the " sermon " and given it charm. But his imitators 
exaggerated these qualities; their effects were sugary and soft, 
and preaching lost its dignity. This trait Bossuet restored. He 
did not write out his sermons, he was too much of an orator to 
forego the advantages of improvision — thus the text of many 
of his sermons only approximates his actual words, and it is 
known that his editor, Deforis, took liberties with that text. 
Nevertheless, Bossuet preached from a sketch that was carefully 
and logically organized, with all the devices of Classical rhetoric. 
In the Sermon sur la mort, delivered at the Louvre in 1662, 
the exordium states that man 

est infiniment meprisable en tant qu'il passe, et infiniment esti- 
mable en tant qu'il aboutit a l'eternite, 



BOSSUET'S WORKS 333 

This is followed by the premier -point, stating that earthly life 
is brief, and by the second point, which stresses our control 
over Nature, our sense of duty, our idea of God — so many proofs 
of immortality. Death, the great leveler, is the central figure of 
Bossuet's thought. It alone gives significance to life. In 
praising the illustrious dead he strives to instruct the living, 
pointing out to them obvious truths, giving them portraits — for 
their emulation or avoidance, such as that of Cromwell in the 
Oraison de Henriette de France — and rising at times to great 
eloquence, as in the famous passage on the death of Henrietta 
of England: 

nuit desastreuse! 6 nuit effroyable, ou retentit tout a, coup 
com me un eclat de tonnerre cette etonnante nouvelle : Madame se 
meurt ! Madame est morte ! 

Contrast the simple majesty of this with the more worldly 
panegyrics of the epoch, and the genius of Bossuet is at once 
apparent. 

As for the instructional works, the Discours sur I'histoire 
universelle remains the outstanding one. Its importance as 
a serious philosophy of history may be questioned. Yet there is 
no doubt that it served as such for Classicism. Bossuet aims 
at nothing less than a " theology of human progress," from 
Adam to Charlemagne. The Discours is divided into three parts : 
(1) On Epochs, which gives a chronological outline; (2) On 
Religions, which establishes the idea of Providence ruling the 
world through his chosen peoples; and (3) On Empires, which 
confirms the succession of Rome. Thus historical unity is found 
in religion: Judea, Christianity and Rome. Having determined 
this fact — de parti pris — Bossuet is free to deal with secondary 
causes, and here he is at his best. He would make his royal 
pupil see the true character of kings and peoples; why they 
succeed, why they fail. Events mean little to him; it is the 
man behind the event whom he would make the Dauphin under- 
stand. Lacking modern erudition, Bossuet is yet a master of 
his material ; he seeks to be impartial and is led — as far as his 
thesis permits — by psychological and rational considerations. 
Above all, he has the ability to survey a movement, and he 
points the way to, even if he does not attain, the position of 



334 BOILEAU AND BOSSUET 

Montesquieu. On the other hand, the effect of his theory is 
static. He reenforces the old absolutes of une loi, un roi, 
une foi; and he does so with the optimism of his vigorous 
personality. 

Bossuet's works of controversy have the same unified purpose 
as the Discours. The Histoire des variations des eglises protes- 
tantes, in fifteen volumes, is a clever piece of argumentation. 
Moreover, it is thoroughgoing. On the side of the Protestants 
he finds discord, on the side of the Catholics, unity ; thus Bossuet 
would confound those who had deserted Rome. Why they 
deserted, Bossuet does not explain. But he has no doubt as to 
their eventual repentance; he feels sure that the enlightened 
policy of Rome will reintegrate the Protestants in the Universal 
Church. For the moment Bossuet wished to strike them in their 
most vulnerable spot; and so he sets them against one another, 
Lutherans, Calvinists, Anglicans and the rest, in ruinous 
opposition. 

His controversy with Fenelon we must leave for a later chapter 
(Pt. Ill, Bk. I, Ch. II). Suffice it to remark here that the Rela- 
tion sur le quietisme is inspired by the general attitude found 
in Bossuet's other works. Quietism, encouraged by Mme Guyon, 
was a form of mysticism which seemed to leave religion to the 
impulse of personal emotion, and any such type of individualism 
was abhorrent to the rationally minded bishop. 

As for Bossuet's style, it places him in the front rank of 
seventeenth- century prose writers. Its great quality is cadence. 
Bossuet's His periods roll forth like great waves of emotion. 
Style jj e no t on iy c jtes the Scripture, he incorporates 

it into himself, so that its imagery, its sententiousness, its gravity 
appear to spring from the speaker's own mind. But in his 
periodic style he commands many variations. " Tout lui sert," 
says Joubert, " le langage des rois, des politiques et des guerriers; 
celui du peuple et du savant, du village et de l'ecole, du sanctu- 
aire et du barreau." Picturesque and poetic as his images are, 
and taken for the most part from Latin writers and the Church 
Fathers, he can also wield the plainer style coupe: rapid, logical 
and always to the point. He says in a discours: 

On me blame, on me meprise, on m'oublie: quel est le plus rude 
a la nature, ou plutot a Famour-propre? Je ne sais. 



BOSSUET'S CONTEMPORARIES 335 

Could language be more direct and forcible? It was this mastery 
over French, coupled with Bossuet's soaring vision of mankind 
and of history, which more than any other quality gave him the 
epithet of the " Eagle of Meaux." 

A contemporary of Bossuet's in the pulpit was Bourdaloue 
(1632-1704), whose Sermons, commonplace as they often were, 
His Con- pleased the court. In the words of his biographer 
temporaries yi ne t : " H precha, il confessa, il consola." Although 
a Jesuit, Bourdaloue had the moral intensity of a Jansenist; 
and the pictures he gives of corruption in high places elicited the 
admiration of Boileau. His style has none of the lyrical splendor 
of Bossuet; it is clear and telling, but it tends toward logical 
precision and abstraction. Bourdaloue is the Descartes of 
oratory, and in the controversy about Tartuffe he ably discerned 
the difficulty of distinguishing religious observance from 
hypocrisy. 

But a spirit of decadence pervaded the close of Louis XIV's 
reign. Massillon (1663-1742), another churchman, comments 
on the " enervating atmosphere " as one enters Versailles. A 
charitable Christian, Massillon strove against it valiantly and 
then succumbed. His Sermons have grace and elegance of form 
and a certain philosophic breadth which made them appeal, later 
on, to Voltaire. But they lack the force of a strong personality 
and readily go off into hyperbole and the worst type of 
Ciceronian imitation. 

Lastly, Flechier (1632-1710), a writer of charming Latin 
verse and a frequenter of ruelles, is more of a society wit than 
a cleric. He preached conventionally on the sins of the world — ■ 
the little sins, those of pride, unpaid debts, money-marriages, 
and so on. At the same time, his words seem to have been spoken 
with an exquisite ironic smile, and his funeral Orations, in par- 
ticular, swayed his hearers by the musical rhythm of their 
rhetoric. 

Thus the Age of the Grand Monarque closes on a note of 
plaintive eloquence. It was eloquent as to the glory and grandeur 
of its achievements — in politics, literature and religion. It 
was plaintive — and ironic — at the thought that no form of 
human culture, however well planned, can last, and that the 
forces which were undermining the body politic were too 



336 BOILEAU AND BOSSUET 

powerful to be stopped. Moreover, a new movement in ideas 
was claiming recognition, and this brings us to the Quarrel of 
the Ancients and Moderns, with which Classicism definitely ends. 
As a final word on this great period, let us note that the 
humanism of the Renaissance finds an enduring expression in 
Bossuet's formulation of the " objective " judgment: 

La vraie perfection de rentendement est de bien juger. Juger, 
c'est prononcer au-dedans de soi sur le vrai et sur le faux; et bien 
juger, c'est y prononcer avec raison et connaissance. 






part in 

MODERN TIMES 



BOOK I 
THE TRANSITION FROM CLASSICISM 

CHAPTER I 

THE QUARREL OF ANCIENTS AND MODERNS: 

RESULTS 

The drive against absolute Classicism dates its success from 
the " Quarrel " between Boileau and Charles Perrault. This 
dispute, as to whether the ancients or the mod- 
Importance erng are ^ begt wr jt ers? j Sj m its larger aspects, 

neither academic nor futile. The quarrel as to mere pre- 
eminence may have been vain, but its importance in literary 
history is due less to the ostensible matter of debate than to 
the new criticism which it awakened and to certain significant 
forces which it released. These center, it will appear, around 
the idea of Progress. 

It has been shown that the ancients themselves were not without 

glimmerings of this idea. It is implicit in the Renaissance, if 

not an " organic phenomenon " of French Classicism. 

Antecedents For what doeg the pl g iade> esp ecially Du Bellay, 

maintain, if not that the ancients may be equalled in many ways? 
Pride of progress is visible in Rabelais and in Etienne Dolet; 
and the early liberalism of Corneille tends in the same direction. 
Yet none of these believe that the moderns are superior en bloc 
and none wish to overthrow the authority of antiquity. That 
is rather the intention of Descartes, who is the direct ancestor 
of modernism. Descartes' impatience with scholasticism extended 
to ancient literature and in making reason the guide in all worldly 
matters, he threw out many suggestions for later philosophers. 
For instance, it is Descartes who, building apparently on St. 
Augustine's notion that humanity may be viewed as developing 
like a single man, upholds that we are truly the ancients, since 
we represent the maturity of the world. This thought is more 
or less repeated by Pascal, Bacon and Fontenelle, and it under- 

339 



I 



340 QUARREL OF ANCIENTS AND MODERNS 

lies certain phases of the Quarrel. Descartes' general principle 
of rationalism (see Pt. II, Bk. Ill, Ch. V) results, through the 
widening skepticism of the Moderns and of the libertins, in 
eighteenth-century philosophy. 
But in seventeenth- century literature, ancient authority was 
H not so easily overcome. A return to scholasticism, the establish- 
ment of the Academy, the pedantry of the Univer- 
sity, and chiefly the triumphant example of the great 
Classicists submerged for a time the worldly and revolutionary 
currents. There were irregular independents; there was always 
a majority in favor of the light salon taste; the " honnete homme " 
usually considered ancient culture pedantic and inelegant. But 
I the great triumvirate, Boileau, Racine, Moliere, succeeded for a 
\ generation in subduing the precieux, in linking hands with an- 
cient tradition, in combining that tradition harmoniously with 
a wise modernity, reason and a fine taste, and especially in 
securing royal and influential favor. It was part of their 
nemesis that in succeeding as Ancients, 1 they also succeeded 
as moderns 1 and left their own productions as the best argu- 
ments for the clever propaganda of Perrault. 

The actual story of the Quarrel still has its human interest. 
It is divided into two epochs, that of the Boileau-Perrault con- 
troversy (1687-1700), and that in which Lamotte maintains 
against Madame Dacier the small worth of poetry in general 
and of Homer in particular (1714-16). The former epoch is 
decidedly the more important and alone need concern us. 

The first resounding note was struck, about 1670, by Desmarets 
de Saint-Sorlin, in his defense of the Christian merveilleux in 
Saint-Sorlin tne e P^ c - Naturally, as poet and as Christian, he 
on the Epic is disposed, to quote Brunetiere, to " mingle his 
pleasures and beliefs," and doubly to slur the ancients: their 
mythology on the one hand, and their literature on the other, 
are represented, in spite of Boileau, as inferior to the modern 

1 These words, when written with a capital, will indicate the partisans of the 
ancients and moderns respectively. The Ancients included: Boileau, Racine, La 
Fontaine, the learned bishop Huet, La Bruyere, Menage, Rapin (the model for the 
President in the ParalUles) — and Mme Dacier. More cautious and moderate 
Ancients were Fenelon and Bouhours. The Moderns included: Saint-Sorlin, P. 
Perrault, Ch. Perrault, Fontenelle, Th. Corneille, Pradon, Bussy-Rabutin — and 
Lamotte and the Abbe de Pons. Moderate Moderns were Segrais and Saint-Evre- 
mond, " le plus classique des modernes." 



THE PERRAULT BROTHERS 341 

possibilities. Before Chateaubriand, Saint-Sorlin pleads for the 
" genius of Christianity " and especially for the religious epic. 
He views poetry as consisting in the truth of its ideas — hence 
Christian subjects are preferable — added to the processes of 
mere mechanical composition; he praises the moderns indiscrim- 
inately, and finally he appeals to Charles Perrault to carry on 
the war. 

The four Perrault brothers demand some personal attention. 
They were all clever, versatile, advanced and rather original. 

Claude, the doctor-architect, who erected the fagade 
Claude, to t he Louvre, is credited by Sainte-Beuve with a 

" genius for comparative anatomy and . . . noble artistic concep- 
tions." But he was satirized by Boileau in the fourth canto of 
the Art poetique and was later stigmatized as a "very great 
enemy of health and good sense." Pierre Perrault translated 
the Secchia rapita of Tassoni (who was one of the first Italian 

Moderns), attacked Boileau and the Ancients in 

Plf^TTP 3.11(1 

Charles a preface thereto (1678), and had previously been 

Perrault convicted of ignorance (in re Euripides) by Racine, 
in the smiling and stinging preface to Iphigenie. Charles, the 
Baron Haussmann of his day, was in general control of the 
royal architectural projects. He is better known to fame as the 
popularizer of the Mother Goose rimes — Contes de ma mere 
I'oye (1697). And he was well suited by his restless enterprising 
nature to stand out as the head and front of the Quarrel. He 
was fertile, ingenious, forward-looking ; he respected the ancients 
little and knew them even less; but he could argue with a dan- 
gerous amiability and, as regards science and religion, with 
a sincere faith. As a self-taught man of action, he had a wide 
if superficial curiosity, considerable energy and a talent for 
organization. 

He began hostilities, on January 27, 1687, at a meeting of the 
Academy held to celebrate the convalescence of Louis XIV. 
Perrault read aloud his poem entitled Le Siecle de Louis le Grand. 
This poem deftly flatters the King, his " century," and certain 
Ch. Perrault's °f ^ s luminaries, to the detriment of the ancients. 
"Siecle." These are men like ourselves, the author declares, 
and deserve no greater reverence — 

I view the ancients with unbending knee. 



342 QUARREL OF ANCIENTS AND MODERNS 

The age of Louis may be favorably compared with the age of 
Augustus, which it surpasses in scientific knowledge and in vari- 
ous inventions. As to literature, ancient eloquence may yet 
be equalled, Aristotle should no longer dominate, and the Iliad, 
tiresome and brutal poem, would be much better done today. 
This part of the attack disgusted Huet, who was wont to groan, 
" Les dieux s'en vont," and it particularly offended Boileau, who, 
seated by the learned bishop, could scarcely control himself and 
soon left the seance, declaring that such a reading was a disgrace 
to the Academy. 

Perrault gave an incomplete and biased list of moderns, 
excluding on that occasion Boileau and Racine, mentioning Mal- 
I ts herbe, Voiture, Moliere, on a par with a dozen 

Argument names forgotten today. But he clearly sets forth 
two main ideas, which are henceforth part of the world's patri- 
mony. First, there is a stability and perpetuity in the forces of 
nature, on which man may safely build. The roses, the stars 
and the birds are as fine as they ever were. Therefore, as regards 
Nature, 

The ceaseless might of that abiding hand, 
Produces Genius for each age and land. 

The companion thought is that with this support in nature — 
and with the further support of a great king — the materials of 
knowledge are always piling up and are now honored by 
" many inventions." It speaks significantly for the increasing 
attention paid to science that Perrault is among the first to 
particularize, in periphrastic verse, the telescope, the microscope, 
and the study of physiology. The defect of his reasoning, and 
that of his coterie, is that he considers art also mainly a matter 
of increasing knowledge, the evolution of rules and precepts. 
But the " Ancients " themselves, from the Italian Renaissance 
through Boileau, had done much to encourage that attitude. 

Some very bad verses together with very advanced ideas are 
contained in this poem. Racine answered it by a bitter-sweet 
Counter- compliment which sought to destroy its importance, 
attacks La Fontaine wrote a temperate Epistle to Huet, in 

which he insists upon the need of a choice among moderns as 
well as ancients, and stoutly upholds the latter as the only safe 



FONTENELLE 343 

guides for worthy imitation and lasting excellence. But already 

La Fontaine hints that the Modern cause is the more popular. 

Boileau launches various epigrams, as much against the Academy 

as against Perrault. To think that this disgraceful thing should 

occur in Paris instead of among the Hurons and the Topinam- 

boux! 

Supporters now rally to the side of Perrault. Chief among 

these is the earlier Fontenelle, the wit and the ladies' man, 

„ „ , whose Digression sur les anciens et les modernes 
Fontenelle's . _, * . . _, lM . ,-,.,. 

"Digres- follows and develops Perrault m several directions. 

sion" p or instance, if trees formerly grew larger than 

today, then Homer and others cannot be equalled. But if not, 
there is hope. Our fibers and vital spirits have not changed, 
and the laws of physics protest against the assertion that after 
producing the ancients, Nature broke her mould. Fontenelle's 
interest in science is already dawning. He continues to the 
effect that much of the advantage attributed to the ancients 
lies in their mere priority; to which it might be answered that 
several of the arguments of the Moderns rest on their mere 
posteriority. Antiquity, says Fontenelle, carried eloquence and 
poetry to a " point of perfection " (a favorite phrase in both 
camps), because the slight number of truths demanded by these 
subjects could soon be amassed and the necessary vivacity of 
imagination needs no amassing. But the sciences, composed, 
of an infinite number of " views," have no end, and the latest 
scientists are always the best. Fontenelle also perceives that 
the moderns have the superiority in (Cartesian) reasoning. . 
Humanity — again considered as one man — had its unsur- 
passed youth of poetry and eloquence; it has now its virility of 
science and reasoning; but it will have no decrepit old age; it 
will be ever capable of repeating the achievements of its youth 
and its prime. Fontenelle, somewhat inconsistently, declares 
that even poetry may be indefinitely perfected. Anticipating 
Lamotte and the other radicals, Fontenelle's appreciations of 
poetry as a sort of versified gallantry are significant. So is his 
Hig development of Perrault's suggestion concerning the 

Strength and perpetuity of natural forces and his emphasis on the 
Weakness sciences. But he does not thoroughly distinguish 
these from the arts, ultimately viewing both as capable of 



344 QUARREL OF ANCIENTS AND MODERNS 

accumulations. He thinks the ancients should be surpassed by 
virtue of the great modern dramatists, the novel and the im- 
proved technique of poetry. He concludes that " nothing so 
hampers the progress of things, nothing so limits intelligence 
as an excessive admiration for the ancients." 

Fontenelle's reception into the Academy (1691) and La Bru- 
yere's admission (1693) were both made occasions for literary 
battles, in which the sturdy moralist tries to hold the traditional 
ground against the dexterous undermining of " Cydias " (see 
next chapter). 

The main document in the Quarrel is Perrault's Paralleles 
des anciens et des modernes (1688-97). These sprightly 
The dialogues — they are appropriately staged at Ver- 

" Paralleles " sailles — present a Chevalier and an Abbe who up- 
hold the moderns against a President, to whom is assigned the 
bad end of the argument. The first interlocutors seem in the 
right more frequently than they really are, because the President 
has little to plead save respect for authority. Perrault's taste and 
judgment are superficial, with little appreciation of the magnifi- 
cent or the delicate. He tries to make a universal survey 
through all the ages and arts, but practically his knowledge 
limits him to modern France. His arguments, though often 
tricky and partial, are varied and plausible, and they proved 
effective enough. He adopts an agreeable degage tone, and he 
allows for differences of opinion, which Boileau does not. Among 
the reasons which Perrault advocates for the superiority of the 
moderns are: the fact that they are the last-comers and can 
best carry forward the " mind of the race " ; an improvement 
in psychological handling — of love affairs, for example — and 
in the method of reasoning; the perfecting of inventions, es- 
pecially the invention of printing; the fact that we may now 
get all the meat of the ancients in translation (this was also 
Lamotte's contention); the protection of the King; the ad- 
vantages of Christianity, particularly in eloquence and epic. 
All these superiorities are applicable as much to the arts as to 
the sciences. There is an insistence everywhere on a measurable 
and calculable progress. And Perrault, like Fontenelle, uses 
the creative productions of the Ancients to vitiate their own 
cause ; by his praise he forces them into the paradoxical position 



THE MODERN CAUSE 345 

of attacking themselves and their friends. Much of this brings 
to mind the familiar and perennial debate between humanists 
and scientists, in the matter of education. Building on Descartes, 
Perrault, in fact, attacks pedantic education, under which head- 
ing he would include — like others — a good deal of true culture 
and knowledge. It has been pointed out that most of the. 
Moderns were ignorant alike of the ancients and of the essential j 
principles of poetry. They propose translations as giving the 
root of the matter and they have little art-sense; they confuse 
genius with the mechanics of the metier and they do not savor 
the historical aroma of masterpieces; they reduce art to the 
intelligible element, expressing a pure Cartesian reason, em- 
bracing scientific rather than sensible symbols. The chief con- 
tentions of the Moderns are thus summed up by M. Gillot, the 
latest historian of the Quarrel: 
Summary 

La poesie moderne est superieure a la poesie antique parce 
qu' inspiree d'une religion plus pure et plus vraie. Art ou poesie, 
les productions modernes l'emportent sur les modeles antiques 
parce que plus achevees de forme et plus conformes aux exigences 
d'un gout delicat. Science ou philosophic, les modernes savent 
mieux et plus que les anciens. Arme d'une methode nouvelle et 
forme par la discipline cartesienne, le genie moderne laisse bien 
loin derriere lui la science rudimentaire des savants anciens. . . . 
Industrie ou arts appliques, il n'est aucune des inventions, qui 
facilitent et embellissent la vie, dont ne se soit avise un siecle de 
decouvertes et de merveilles ingenieuses. 

It is mainly with regard to the supposed advance in beauty 
and taste that we need to question this claim. Perrault him- 
self is breaking down the barriers of taste in his lightness of 
treatment, in his constant appeal to the standpoint of society 
women and the world; he is willing to do without imaginative 
style and metre, the specific marks of poetry; he has a poor 
sense of beauty, which he considers a very mobile and fashion- 
able thing, since all that concerns style, proportion, elegance, 
is relative; he insists on the perpetual relativity of taste, whose 
p .,, boundaries he widens by cross-references to archi- 
Doctrine of tecture, statuary and painting. Nor does he stop 
Taste there. He is constantly dealing with and drawing 

analogies from natural history, medicine, music and the indus- 



346 QUARREL OF ANCIENTS AND MODERNS 

trial arts. Small wonder, then, that with these fresh interests, 
aided by the social revolt against the severe regime of the 
Ancients, Perrault's novelty and urbanity won the day. 

For his cause triumphed, as a matter of general opinion and 
results. Neither the surly indirect retorts of Boileau and his 
Reflexions sur Longin, nor his intelligent concessions 
in the Lettre a M. Perrault, after Arnauld had 
patched up a reconciliation between the leaders, could gainsay or 
withstand the strength of the current. The wise and judicial 
compromises of Fenelon and of Saint-Evremond were alike un- 
I availing. Emancipation was in the air, the respect for authority 
was seriously shaken, and the Quarrel spread with reverberations 
to England and other Northern shores. In France, the force of 
the Renaissance was spent. The neo-classicism of the following 
century, reacting and striving to return to Boileau and a modi- 
fied ancestor-worship, proved only that the real power of the 
modern world lay in developing those relations and widening 
those spheres of knowledge which Perrault and Fontenelle had 
first indicated. Classicism, poetry and taste deteriorated as 
science, philosophy and the industrial arts advanced. 

In fact, two main tendencies may be seen as helping to dif- 
ferentiate the thought and literature of the eighteenth century 
from those of the seventeenth: the tendency toward 
Relativity relativity and the tendency toward expansionism. 
Relativity, or Relativism, may be defined as a philosophic atti- 
jftude which views creeds and standards as not absolutely true 
Abut as dependent on certain conditions of time and place. For 
instance, the nineteenth century has made a great deal of his- 
torical relativity in matters of climate and race, political insti- 
tutions and religious truth. But the way had already been 
pointed out by Bayle and Voltaire, by Montesquieu and Diderot. 
The modern mind — beginning in the eighteenth century — is 
then relative in that it is frequently skeptical concerning abso- 
lutes and also in that (see Perrault above) it seeks to relate or 
associate the various fields of knowledge and art. 
Likewise the modern mind, beginning with the eighteenth 
and century, seems more expansive as regards literary 
Expansionism forms ; it has enlarged their number and broken down 
the barriers between them ; it has made more and more domains 



ITS IMPORTANCE 347 

of knowledge susceptible of literary treatment. So the term 
Expansionism may be used to indicate the inclusion in literary 
history of subjects hitherto considered outside of that field. 
For instance, Fontenelle brings popular astronomy into litera- 
ture and Montesquieu adds the study of laws. In each case 
it is the excellence of the treatment that admits and promotes the 
new subject; and there are, as we shall see, many such cases 
in the eighteenth century. 

Now French Classicism, dealing more with permanent and 
universal human values, had striven everywhere after unity and 
Vs concentration. Largely owing to the influence of 

Classicism the ancients, Expansionism is much limited in the 
Classic production viewed as a whole. With the addition of 
certain polemical and moralistic writings, the genres are much 
the same in the age of Boileau as in the age of Horace. In fact, 
to adopt De Quincey's distinction, the seventeenth century 
represents the more imaginative literature of power, while the 
eighteenth puts the emphasis on the literature of knowledge and 
lets down the bars to admit its many varieties. The former 
concentrates, as already said, on art and the inner nature of 
man ; the latter stresses society and science, which ever " grows 
from more to more." 

The wide divergence between Classical and modern aims is 
still more conspicuous on philosophic grounds. The attitude of 
the seventeenth century towards its Absolutes, the great tradi- 
tional beliefs in king, church and literary law may be summed 
up in the phrase, " une loi, un roi, une foi " (See Pt. II, Bk. IV) . 
Belief in this triad is orthodox and almost universal. The dog- 
matism of Boileau was thus paralleled by the dogmatism of 
Bossuet and by the despotism of Louis XIV. In every field the 
absolute was supreme and there was allowed little discussion of 
fundamentals. " Les grands sujets sont defendus," complained 
La Bruyere in 1688, and it is from La Bruyere that issue the 
first mutterings of social revolt (see next chapter). 

The significance of the Quarrel is that it helped make way 
for the new forces. The literary skepticism of the Moderns 
Significance of liberates the conception of possible progress, or evo- 
the Quarrel lution, which in one form or another has dominated 
thought ever since. And the idea of progress may itself contain 



348 QUARREL OF ANCIENTS AND MODERNS 

the corollaries of a skeptical relativity — hence tolerance — a 
thickening solidarity of knowledge, a growing expansionism, a 
tendency to welcome new notions, new forms, new relations. 
Progressivism thus amplified is a characteristic mark of the 
eighteenth century, to which the nineteenth is so much indebted. 
Modern thought dates from the twilight of Louis XVI (see 
p. 274), and it starts invading literature with Perrault's revolt 
against the ancients. The Quarrel then is extremely important 
on both philosophic and literary grounds. 



CHAPTER II 

WRITERS OF THE TRANSITION: 
LA BRUYERE, SAINT-SIMON, FENELON 

Politically, the most conservative of these three men is Saint- 
Simon, but the most Classical in taste is La Bruyere (1645-1696) . 
Coming at the end of the great century, recognizing 
La Bruyere ^^ ^ e a g e had reached its "point of perfection," 
this writer rounds off the Classical doctrine and completes the 
courtly picture. Clinging to the past, he disliked the present 
and distrusted the future. 

Little is known of Jean de la Bruyere's life, until, in his fortieth 
year, he entered the household of the great Conde, to publish, 
shortly afterwards, his one masterpiece — Les 
Caracteres (1688). These are the two main events 
in an existence which remains for the most part silent and mys- 
terious. Without knowing why, we know only that he had 
accepted various offices merely to give them up, that he lived 
unmarried, in an obscure tutorial position. The most plausible 
explanation seems to be that La Bruyere was emphatically the 
man of one book, which became his fixed idea. To serve Les 
Caracteres, he renounced a good deal of living, while subordinat- 
ing himself to the study of society. 

His later years were packed with enough events and publicity 
to atone for his early obscurity. There were many outbreaks 
of feeling and opinion in connection with the thinly disguised 
portraits in Les Caracteres and with the consequent rejection of 
La Bruyere by the Academy. He was finally elected (1693) in 
the face of stormy opposition, and his uncompromising discours 
on that occasion was a notable expression of dogged independence. 

That is the chief mark of his character throughout. Independ- 
ence and originality are the qualities that he constantly recom- 
mends and practices in his writings, and it must have 
been a bitter pill for him to subdue his individuality 
in the service of the grandees. The results are visible in a some- 

349 



350 WRITERS OF THE TRANSITION 

what soured disposition. La Bruyere, like Boileau, is a crusty- 
bourgeois bachelor, sardonic and downright. He was also sensi- 
tive and not at ease in company; he preferred quiet, a few good 
friends and a library. Withdrawing into himself, he devoted his 
studious leisure, as a contemporary put it, to the task of " dis- 
tilling " his immortal book. 

The author's material is indicated by the subtitle; les Moeurs 
de ce siecle.* His declared intention is psychological, general- 
izing, instructive. He portrays society's divisions 
and occupations, of which his chapter-headings give 
a fairly complete survey. As regards composition, the volume 
was first issued as a collection of " remarks "; it presents in fact 
a series of observations, covering a number of years and sug- 
gesting an expanded and polished diary. Neither chapters nor 
portraits are composed all of one piece ; we have rather a mosaic 
of maxims, a gallery of paintings. This comparative freedom of 
composition adds to the effect of naturalness and life. 

In another direction of form, the author shows the most con- 
stant care. Style was his main delight and preoccupation. Here 
he is really a creative artist. His diction is pictur- 

y e esque and incisive. He has his own strong phrasings 

and metaphors, his " mots aventuriers," as he termed them, to- 
gether with a considerable play of fancy. All this tends towards 
a vividness of expression, conspicuous in his portraits. His 
sentences are often long and analytical, his figures realistic and 
precise, but he remains Classical in his addiction to epigram 
and balance. On the whole it is an elaborate laborious style, 
hard and bold rather than smooth or flowing. A lapidary is at 
work, an assorter and refiner, whose main desire is to be distinct 
and individual. 

The chief literary types used are maxims and portraits, 
which correspond, it has been well said, like text and illustra- 
Maxims and tions. The maxims suggest at once La Rochefou- 
Portraits cauld and Pascal, though they lack the concise per- 
fection of these masters. They are more freely expressed and 
more like Montaigne in style, in the personal truth, and in the 
view of human mobility. Many fine and subtle thoughts are given 

1 His model was the Greek work of Theophrastus, also called Characters, which 
La Bruyere himself translated. 



LA BRUYERE 351 

adequate wording, but the great achievement of La Bruyere is 
rather in the portrait. To this genre he gives final consummate 
form. He gives it indeed many forms, since all varieties of 
portraits are to be found: moral or psychological, physical, full- 
length, sketches, pendants, pastels. The characters may bear 
precieux or ancient names, but their physiognomies are living 
and moving likenesses, usually drawn from celebrities of the 
time. Thus Cydias, the wit, represents Fontenelle; Emile, the 
great general, is Conde or Turenne; Roscius is Baron, the 
comedian; Menalque amusingly depicts a certain absent-minded 
Comte de Brancas. Other striking portraits are those of Arrias, 
the conceited dogmatist; Emire, the heartless woman; Giton and 
Phedon, respectively the rich and the poor man. The effect of 
vividness is attained not only through the lively style, but also 
through the use of physical and characteristic details. The 
author poses his subject in many ways, walks all around him, 
exhausts him, and will not leave the main trait of the victim 
alone; he twists and wrings it to the last drop; or, sometimes, 
there is a dramatic reservation of the real point until the very 
close. In certain directions La Bruyere appears as fuller and 
more subtle than Moliere, but he is less universal; his portraits, 
for all their variety, bear more the mark of his own age. 

His thought is Classical and conservative, in that he insists 
on the old qualities of reason and truth, measure and sobriety. 
He holds by the rules and stands firmly on the side 
of the Ancients in the Quarrel. As regards the 
monarchy, La Bruyere praises Louis for his real qualities — the 
rest are " forbidden subjects." But he slips in theories concern- 
ing an ideal government that makes for the happiness of the 
people. In religion, he favors the extinction of heresy ; the idea 
of tolerance has scarcely reached the Parisians. He has no 
doubts concerning dogma and is pronounced in his condemnation 
and ridicule of freethinkers. 

Yet throughout the work, one is conscious, as La Bruyere him- 
self was conscious, that he comes during the twilight of the Clas- 
Social s ^ ca l §°ds. A certain weariness in their support, a 

Criticism feeling of surfeit and decadence, is noticeable. That 
critical spirit which he would not direct against the major powers, 
he turns against the lesser orders. There are savage cuts at nearly 



352 WRITERS OF THE TRANSITION 

every kind of wealth and aristocracy. The fortune-hunters, the 
nouveaux riches, the fanners- general, patrons, misers and 
gamblers, are all cursed with the money taint. Especially does 
La Bruyere excoriate the court. It is ruled by self-interest, it 
displays only vanity and waste, it leads only to unhappiness. 
Some of the best portraits, of great satiric strength, are those 
depicting the courtiers. The grandees themselves find little favor 
in La Bruyere's eyes. They have left their opportunities to do 
good unimproved. They are ignorant and neglectful and are 
already being ousted from government by the rise of more intelli- 
gent classes. We do not need to wait for the eighteenth century 
to find out what was the matter with the seventeenth, and there 
is no heavier indictment of the age of Louis XIV than this pre- 
pared by his humble servant. 

With the people La Bruyere is more preoccupied than any 
other writer of his time. There is a famous and dreadful passage 
in which he describes the peasants, those "beasts 
essimis b ounc [ £ ^h e ground," who are yet articulate and 
human and who deserve a share in the bread they have so mourn- 
fully sown. La Bruyere, hating the aristocrats, declares, " je 
veux etre peuple." But he has no conviction of a new order and 
little sense of progress. He enforces neither the rights of man 
nor the wrongs of woman — whom he considers a poor creature. 
The fact is that La Bruyere, like La Rochefoucauld, is mainly 
pessimistic and destructive in spirit. All his wit and art cannot 
disguise his misanthropy. He is not a cynic, for he has stand- 
ards. He is a sensitive critic, disappointed of perfection, an 
idealist gone morose. He shows a touch of heart in several 
passages, but almost no gaiety nor cheer. 

Thus he lacks the broadness of the profounder moralists, whose 
level he also misses by having no deep and original system. * 
Comparative -^ e rare ly penetrates to the obscure reason which is 
Position at the core of human sentiments, as La Roche- 
foucauld, rightly or wrongly, seeks to penetrate. La Bruyere is 
more occupied with modes of thought and passion; he is not 
universal nor philosophic. Yet in his thorough description of his 
own day and time, he is without a peer and shows a relative pro- 
fundity. He is not greatly constructive; but he follows faith- 
fully the receding tide of a remarkable era. 



SAINT-SIMON 353 

The French have long been unequalled in the writing of 
Memoirs, and those of Saint-Simon are the greatest in the lan- 
guage. What the Cardinal de Retz did for Louis 
Saint-Simon xill, Saint-Simon accomplished for the age of Louis 
XIV and the Regency, with still more remarkable merits of 
extent, interest and literary power. He gives full accounts of 
the inner workings of the most brilliant period in French history. 
He makes the picture galleries of Versailles and the Louvre step 
down from their frames and live and move before our eyes. 

Louis de Saint-Simon (1675-1755) was born of a noble house. 
He was a " duke and peer " like his father. Both men believed 
in the divine right of nobles as well as in their responsibilities 
{noblesse oblige), and both showed a conservative tendency to 
prefer the " good old days." With these feudal ideas and with 
a fondness for reading history, Saint-Simon left home a rebel 
against the actual order. In person he was rather small and 
ill-made, but he had much vital force. He married a worthy 
lady for whom he had due affection and respect. Entering the 
army, he went through a campaign or two without distinction, 
and displeased Louis XIV by resigning his commission. 

The greater part of Saint-Simon's active life was passed at 
Versailles, where he was an assiduous observer and critic. He 
Court Life was ^ 00 Punctilious about small matters, too little of 
1702-1724 a courtier and statesman to please the powers; and 
the Great Monarch once told the free-spoken nobleman that 
he must learn to " hold his tongue." Twice he approached a 
position of influence, with the Dauphin and under the regency of 
the Due d'Orleans, of whom Saint-Simon was a staunch friend. 
But though instrumental in forming the Regent's " councils " (see 
next chapter) and in forcing the degradation of the illegitimate 
sons of Louis XIV, he avoided positions of trust and wavered 
in large matters. He withdrew to his estates on the death of 
the Regent. 

His role at court was in accordance with his character, which 

was that of a very fussy person. He was always occupied with 

questions of etiquette, precedence and trappings; 

when the Great Monarch died, Saint-Simon was 

above all concerned about what sort of a " bonnet " a certain 

President should wear. He considered these things as symbols 



354 WRITERS OF THE TRANSITION 

of the waning aristocratic power which it was his chief desire 
to restore. He had a fiery disposition, with much capacity both 
for hating and loving — their " nerve and principle is the same," 
he significantly says. His friends were few but well chosen, and 
his abundant curiosity kept him many channels of information 
among high and low. Ministers, valets and women of the court 
unconsciously supplied the materials for his Memoirs. 

These were written during his retirement, a period of thirty 
years which he spent partly on his country estate, partly in his 
The Paris library. Without occupation, disheartened by 

" Memoires " family afflictions, Saint-Simon once chanced to read 
Dangeau's Journal de la Regence. The old courtier amused 
himself by jotting down " additions " which vivified Dangeau's 
facts and personages. Gradually he was possessed with the idea 
of completing his own Memoirs, which he had started as a youth. 
From this beginning and from a mass of notes accumulated dur- 
ing his court life, the actual Memoires had their birth. For 
fifteen years Saint-Simon spent many feverish midnights remem- 
bering and recording the great days which he knew so well. He 
had time to recopy the whole text before his death (1755), and 
for two generations the dangerous manuscript lay in the Foreign 
Office. A fairly complete edition was published only in the days 
of Romanticism. 

As a writer of history proper, of which he had rather a personal 
and imaginative conception, Saint-Simon is far from perfect. He 
The makes numerous errors of date, of fact and of judg- 

Historian ment. Furthermore, his prejudices stood tremend- 
ously in the way. He could see no good in any class but the 
hereditary nobility, and he particularly disdained the crowd of 
court " lackeys," i. e. the parasites, as well as the royal favorites 
and ministers. This makes him unjust to the Cardinal Dubois 
and to Mme de Maintenon. Differing from Montesquieu, he 
had no esteem for the noblesse de robe or the parliamentary and 
judicial families. He was impatient if not ignorant of financial 
matters, as appears in his accounts of the famous banking system 
introduced by John Law. He was no soldier and so he cannot 
understand the professional merits of such marshals as Villeroy 
and Villars, whom he condemns simply as courtiers and indi- 
viduals. Even the higher ranges of diplomacy and international 



SAINT-SIMON 355 

politics are seen mainly from the angle of precedence and 
ceremony. Finally, his frank opinion of Louis XIV, though 
well warranted in some respects, is unjust as a whole and 
diminishes too greatly that princely figure. Saint-Simon 
admits that he is " lacking in charity." Another disappointed 
courtier, like La Rochefoucauld, he finds fault with the life 
which found no great place for him. His pessimistic picture 
is thus the reverse and the complement of Voltaire's Steele 
de Louis XIV. 

On that very account the Memoirs have their historical value. 
They are thoroughly sincere. Despite some errors of fact, they 
are crammed with a wide general knowledge and 
Chief Values with keen b serva ti n. They are realistic and 
personal above all. They excel in two things: in vivid portraiture 
and in striking accounts of impressive scenes. Saint-Simon is a 
psychological and picturesque historian, and the Memoirs are 
greater than many histories because they are closer both to life 
and to literature. 

Unlike La Bruyere, he rarely deals with abstract types. He 
depicts an actual pageant crowded with innumerable distinct 
figures. These are often characterized in powerful 
and disdainful language. " Monseigneur," the son 
of the king, is " sunk in fat and apathy," the Due de Maine is 
" like a demon in malignity and perversity of soul," another 
man is called a " court rat," and Voltaire is haughtily dismissed 
as a scalawag son of a notary, influential " in a certain set." 
For the ladies, Saint-Simon wields a more graceful brush and 
gives usually a living physical portrait. So the Duchess of Bur- 
gundy is described in her habitual gestures and manners. For 
her and for her husband, the lamented Dauphin, the writer shows 
much admiration and tenderness. But toward his enemies he is 
implacable and excessive. The Due de Noailles, who had shown 
himself a perfidious friend, is the " serpent who tempted Eve and 
ruined the human race." Apparently Saint-Simon could shrivel 
the Duke with a glance, and his whole account of their relation- 
ship gives a deep impression of thoroughly savored vengeance. 
In all these portraits the effect is gained by accumulation of 
details, by vivid depiction and a biting force of language. 

The same is true of the famous scenes, in which the narrator 



356 WRITERS OF THE TRANSITION 

shows also his dramatic ability. Of these, the most celebrated 
is the long description, from council-chamber to Bed 
' x of Justice, of how the Duke of Maine and the Count 

of Toulouse were degraded from their ranks. This was the chief 
event of Saint-Simon's life, for he was the senior among the peers 
from whose number the King's natural sons were expelled. The 
historian frankly makes himself the center of all eyes, depicts 
his exuberant physical joy, and carefully notes the successive 
steps in the proceedings. As the " spy of his century," he made 
it a point to be present on all memorable occasions ; he is supreme 
in reporting them and in reading the faces of the participants. 
Death-beds, royal levees, hunting and gaming, fetes and meetings 
of the councils, are described over and over again, with an effect 
of absorbing interest. Throughout, people conduct themselves 
most naturally. Doors open and shut, real faces flash forth, 
grandees blow noses and box ears, there is much particularity 
about all doings, great and small, anecdotes and incidents, 
ceremonies and usages, — a sort of court gazette palpitating with 
life, and displaying the imposing figure of the monarch behind all. 
Saint-Simon's language is very individual. Incoherent in 
syntax, sometimes obscure and faulty, it rises in high moments 
to a torrent of vehement eloquence. Lacking Clas- 
sical measure and repose, it is a style peculiarly 
adapted to his " tableaux vivants " and to passionate invective. 
It is the natural reflection of the man himself, careless of aca- 
demic perfection, hurried, lordly, involved. Saint-Simon uses 
the strongest adjectives, vivid figures and expressions; his diction 
is chosen with startling accuracy or imaginative appeal and he 
reproduces dialogue to the life. His violent sensibility, says 
Taine, was too acute for sober action, but constituted the very 
marrow of an ardent and eager literary genius. 

In his thought and position, Saint-Simon was a lonely Moses 
without a Promised Land. He faces backwards, not forwards. 
Both his high-seriousness and his conservatism are 
Conclusion of thg seventeenth century; he was scarcely aware of 
the eighteenth. Though he discerned many of the faults in 
Louis XIV and his age, Saint-Simon clings to the royal and 
aristocratic prerogatives, disdaining the philosophes, a devout 
churchman, little concerned with the people. And his indi- 



FENELON 357 

vidualism repelled his own order, which he served better in 
literature than in politics. He holds his unique place through 
the majestic sweep and the finished detail of his great historical 
frescoes. 

" Une magnifique creature et infiniment seduisante " — this is 
Saint-Simon's tribute to Francois de Salignac de la Mothe- 
Fenelon (1651-1715), archbishop of Cambrai and 
author of Telemaque. A writer distinctly of the 
second order, Fenelon lives chiefly through the charm of his per- 
sonality and the weight of his influence. The whole purpose of 
his life and work was to give sound moral instruction: this is seen 
in his tutoring of the Dauphin, in the tone and content of his 
various writings, and in his power as spiritual " director " of 
many congregations and people. As a studious and well-nur- 
tured youth, he was early marked for the church, sent through 
Saint-Sulpice, and designated, in two communities, to lead Prot- 
estants back to the fold; a delicate task, in which he showed 
both tolerance and tact. His complex nature was able to combine 
worldly knowledge and ambition with a sincere piety, tending 
towards mysticism. Appointed preceptor to the Duke of Bur- 
gundy, favored by Mme de Maintenon and a choice circle at 
court, he was at the height of his career when made archbishop 
in 1695. But already certain clouds were forming; Fenelon 
had become the friend of Mme Guyon, a semi-hysterical mystic ; 
according to Saint-Simon, u leur sublime s'amalgama." The 
two friends were partial to the doctrine called Quietism, 
which included absorption in the divine spirit through prayer 
and the " pure love " of God, independently of future reward. 
This doctrine was condemned as unorthodox and a long con- 
troversy raged between Fenelon and Bossuet. The former was 
finally disapproved by the Pope, exiled from court and re- 
stricted for the rest of his life to his diocese of Cambrai, which 
he administered admirably. 

Fenelon's best writings are associated with his brief court 
career or with the controversy about Quietism. As for the 
Miscellaneous l^ter we nee d notice only the plaintive and seduc- 
Writings tive eloquence which Fenelon opposes to Bossuet's 
dogmatism. A similar winning tone characterizes the Lettres 
spirituelles, containing a liberal and persuasive theology. For 



358 WRITERS OF THE TRANSITION 

the young prince Fenelon wrote some Fables, the Dialogues des 
Morts — anticipating Fontenelle, though not so good — and 
particularly the Telemaque. This and two other important 
works may be considered more at length. 

At first reading, the famous Telemaque (1699) is likely to 
prove a disappointment. It seems too juvenile and shows too 
The plainly its purpose of moral and Christian instruc- 
" Telemaque " tion, insinuated through antique disguises. But as 
in other works of this period, the Classicism of Telemaque needs 
to be pondered and assimilated. It is throughout an imitation, 
mainly of the Odyssey, partly of the Aeneid and other ancient 
masterpieces. The adventures of Telemachus are like those of 
Ulysses, the nymph Calypso corresponds to Circe, there are 
many voyages, even to the lower regions, and the style, in de- 
scriptions, episodes and long Homeric similes, is a medley of 
classical phrases and allusions. To one nourished on antiquity, 
as Fenelon himself was nourished, the book should have an 
agreeable reminiscential flavor. Written with much charm and 
grace, it is now a standard volume for youth and for foreigners 
learning French; but its initial success was due to its political 
criticism. Everybody saw that Louis XIV was indirectly 
reprimanded, and Fenelon's central thought was to form the 
Dauphin on a very different model. He was taught the dangers 
of " les conquetes, le faste et le luxe . . . et le pouvoir absolu," 
and he was warned against flattering ministers and women. 
Fenelon preaches gospel morality as opposed to the politics then 
current. He is capable of fine psychological portrayal and, 
with all his clericalism, he depicts love as one who knows. His 
imagination is not grandiose, but lively and colorful. His 
simplified style is harmonious and flowing. At his best, he has 
a rapid narrative gift, and his dialogue is superior to his rather 
conventional descriptions. Of its kind, as a neo-classical imi- 
tative work, Telemaque contains a good deal of placid beauty. 

The little treatise, De VEducation des Filles (1687) has been 

called the point of departure for modern French pedagogy. 

Fenelon points out how feminine education (in the 

s ucator w ^ es t sense ) h as not been commensurate with the 
importance of woman in family and social life. Her dignity 
must be maintained, her faults, such as vanity and ignorance, 



FENELON 359 

must be corrected in girlhood, and especially must she be 
strengthened by reason- and self-government, rather than by 
imposed authority. Then there are sensible precepts, suggesting 
Rousseau, as to the education of very young children, whose 
brain is " always wavering, as a lighted candle in a windy place." 
Returning to young girls, Fenelon seems to restrict their cultural 
education, in that music, art and poetry are considered danger- 
ous. The great object is to gain the heart of Mademoiselle 
for Christian virtue. None of these principles seem very start- 
ling now, but they represented some distinct novelties for 
that time. 

Fenelon as literary critic is seen to considerable advantage 
in his Lettre a I'Academie (1714). Here as in the correspond- 
ence with Lamotte (a radical Modern), the Quarrel 
As Critic reappears. The polite Fenelon refuses to commit 
himself and shows an evident desire to please everybody, but on 
the whole he is a liberal Ancient. His taste, his heart and his 
education place him on the side of antiquity, but he is not blind to 
certain modern excellences. In criticizing genres, he deplores 
the reforms of Malherbe, as limiting the French vocabulary and 
regulating poetry too narrowly. Ancient eloquence is certainly 
superior to the modern. In tragedy, Racine's merits are recog- 
nized, but Corneille is considered bombastic and there is too 
much love-making in French plays. A great poet will always 
tend toward virtue and religion, and Moliere's greatness is im- 
paired by his easy morals. Fenelon is sound on history and fore- 
sees such modern developments as the history of institutions and 
careful revivifications of past epochs. Such points may ex- 
emplify his approach to many questions agitated during the 
eighteenth century, and Fenelon clearly possesses a critical and 
appreciative mind. His preference for simplicity above every- 
thing appears in his own prose, which is easy and natural, like 
that of Voltaire. 

Of the three writers dealt with in this chapter, Fenelon, the 
least remarkable for individual literary talent, is the most liberal 
His an d forward-reaching in his ideas. His " tolerance " 

Liberalism is almost a legend and was respected by the earlier 
generation of philosophes. In politics, all three men were dis- 
satisfied with the court regime. Fenelon alone dares point out 



360 WRITERS OF THE TRANSITION 

how a monarch should govern in connection with the people. 
His essential aristocracy of temper, his delicate nature and his 
almost feminine charm interfered neither with his courage nor 
with his clear-sightedness. 



CHAPTER III 

THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY: 
HISTORY AND SOCIETY 

Some knowledge of the historical and social features of the 

ancien regime is essential to an understanding of its literature. 

Louis XIV had ended in unpopularity and gloom, 

e egency aQ( ^ a p er j 0( j f formality was followed by a period 
of license. The regency of Philip, Duke of Orleans, lasted only 
eight years (1715-1723) and except for a small war with Spain 
contains little external history. But it is a significant epoch on 
account of the experiments in administration, the restlessness 
of thought and especially the degree of license that has im- 
parted a peculiar flavor to the word Regence. Philip himself 
seems a replica of Charles II of England: immoral, indolent, 
good-natured, a connoisseur rather than a statesman. It was 
the Due de Noailles who wrestled with the finances and repressed 
certain expenditures. The financial salvation of the country 
was entrusted to John Law, who established the modern system 
of paper credit, founded the Banque de France and the 
Mississippi Company. But France was deluged with paper 
and a crash was inevitable. In the meantime an attempt to 
govern by six administrative councils had yielded to a ministry 
along the old lines ; the Abbe Dubois, as premier, seemed another 
Mazarin in craft and shrewdness. Dubois' main title to respect 
is that he negotiated the Triple Alliance of England, France and 
Holland. 

The ministry of the Duke of Bourbon, who succeeded Orleans 
as Regent, lasted only three years. It is distinguished by a 
Reign of bitter persecution of the Protestants in the Cevennes 
Louis XV and by the marriage of the young King to Maria 
Leczinska of Poland. The reign of Louis XV was a period of 
general and cumulative disaster. At home, there was political 
stagnation and growing discontent. Abroad, little of distinction 

361 



- - t 
362 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 

marked the deeds of France and she gradually lost her place 
in the estimation of Europe. Louis XV was a useless and un- 
worthy king; the temper of the nation sank towards his level; 
the influence of favorites, mistresses and incompetents became 
pronounced ; and the national finances went from bad to worse. 

This general decadence was not so conspicuous until after the 
middle of the century. Cardinal Fleury took charge of affairs 
in 1726. His policy was cautious and dull. He 
First Ha enforced the bull Unigenitus, imprisoned and re- 
moved Jansenists, did something for commerce, and won Lorraine 
for France by a treaty of 1738. In the war of the Austrian 
Succession (1741-48) the French did not play a creditable part 
save in the matter of isolated victories. France had recognized 
the right of Maria Theresa to the Austrian throne and yet 
joined Frederick the Great in attacking her. The battle of 
Fontenoy was won from the English by the genius of Marshal 
Saxe. The war, carried into India and America, assumed world- 
wide proportions. But France, left in the lurch by Frederick, 
signed the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle without gaining any sub- 
stantial advantages. " Bete comme la paix " became a Parisian 
byword. The governors of the country had proved themselves 
a weak lot. The national prestige was tarnished, and the result 
was a torrent of popular criticism. Louis was no longer " le 
Bien-Aime." Immorality and even oppression the French could 
stand, but not the loss of glory. 

Frederick's bad faith started the famous Seven Years War, 
but the deeper cause was that opposition of English and French 
Second Half interests which now extended from the Mississippi 
(1750-74) to the Ganges. This war meant for France the loss 
of America and India. Montcalm and Dupleix were not steadily 
supported in their brilliant efforts abroad ; in Europe incapable ' 
generals and ministers, " tumbling one after the other like magic 
lantern pictures " (Voltaire) , were responsible for signal defeats 
in diplomacy and in the field. The Due de Choiseul was 
appointed too late to save the situation. Another most unsatis- 
factory peace for France was concluded, and Choiseul could turn 
his attentions homewards, where there was much to call for 
healing measures. But this minister, like his greater successors 
under Louis XVI, could not wrestle with the enormous national 



SOCIAL ASPECTS 363 

debt nor with the whole rotten system of taxation. The Jesuits 
were expelled from France, the Parisian Parliament was curbed 
once more, and the well-meaning sluggish Dauphin was married 
to Marie Antoinette of Austria. The Beaumarchais incident 
(see Book III, Ch. II) discredited the law-courts. In the mean- 
time, the corrupt far niente of the dying monarchy was revealed 
once again by the French inactivity before the first shameless 
partition of Poland. Louis XV ended his reign in 1774 amid the 
ignominies of smallpox, a fleeing court, a jesting populace, and 
an extreme unction indefinitely postponed to accommodate an 
unworthy favorite. 

Taine's analysis of the old regime shows that the feudal 
domination of the upper orders was no longer warranted. The 
Social privileged classes included the king, the nobles and 

Structure the higher clergy; they still retained their great 
privileges ; but they had lost all ability to rule and all desire to 
serve the nation. The nobles, laity and clergy, numbered over 
two hundred thousand. They were powerful and rich, owning 
two-fifths of the land in France and to a considerable extent 
exempt from the taxes which oppressed the people so heavily. 

The nobles were supposed to represent the public at the 
capital and to serve as magistrates in the country. But they 
were largely absentee-landlords. Those who re- 
1 1 y mained on their estates were generally too poor and 
inadequate to help the peasantry, who frequently surrendered 
four-fifths of their income to their various overlords. The 
tithes, the poll-tax, the salt-tax, other impositions and burdens, 
particularly in connection with the lordly diversion of hunting, 
crushed the hearts of the people. Some of the resident nobles 
were mildly inclined, but their debts placed them simply in the 
position of creditors and oppressors of their tenantry. The 
absentees were still worse, having no knowledge of the people, 
and enforcing their demands through heartless overseers. The 
funds required for the extravagance of court life made them 
pitiless. Not only did they abandon their home responsibilities, 
but they served no useful function at court. A thousand of the 
oldest and highest aristocracy set the pace and drew everything 
towards Paris and Versailles. France has never recovered from 



364 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 

the excessive centralization of the old regime. Much of the 
country-side was then deserted, exhausted agriculturally, stag- 
ana the nant politically, without good roads, and in the 
Provinces direst poverty. But between Paris and Versailles 
a double row of carriages thronged the highway all day long. 
The provinces were actually ruled by thirty " intendants " 
responsible only to the king; the taxes were farmed out to the 
traitants (farmers-general) , who paid a lump sum for the privi- 
lege of grinding the poor; such offices, as well as the sinecures 
about court, were bought and sold with no thought save for the 
loot involved. The great nobles, like the lesser courtiers (con- 
temptuously called laquais by Saint-Simon and Montesquieu), 
were for the most part selfish and rapacious. Gambling and 
extravagance gave rise to colossal debts; the Duke of Bourbon 
owed six millions at the time of his death, and the first Regent 
paid two millions for the celebrated diamond which bears his 
name. The higher clergy were equally extravagant, as the 
pomp of the Rohans demonstrates, and ecclesiastical sinecures 
were also preempted by the nobility. The whole class had 
little feudal leadership, little taste for farming or politics. 
They were interested mainly in gambling, gallantry and court 
life. The nobles did not rule; they took. They were no longer 
instruments, but merely ornaments. 

Many of these abuses began under Louis XIV, and it has been 
seen (Pt. II, Book IV, Ch. I) how in his time the court was the 
King and center of pomp and magnificence. But it was also 
Court then the center of real power in every field. Now 

the personal centralization of the Great Monarch is no longer 
possible. " The nation has no longer a head, history no longer a 
focus ; together with a master of the higher order, great servants 
also fail the French monarchy " (Guizot) . Yet the king's 
authority in important matters remains absolute and despotic. 
The " intermediary bodies " (see Montesquieu) , such as the 
judicial Parliament of Paris or the provincial States-General, 
have only a limited and occasional interference in affairs. The 
king is a pasha attended by lesser pashas. He is considered the 
commander, the owner of France, the perpetual representative 
of the people, the delegate of God. The nobles flocked to Paris, 
hailing the youth of Louis XV with affection and veneration, as 



SOCIAL ASPECTS 365 

did the entire body of the people. They clung pathetically to a 
trust in the monarchy, their barrier and hope, even when the 
person of the king had palled, as it did towards the middle of 
the century. Beginning with the freedom of the Regency, the 
petits soupers of the Regent, and the scandalous vices of his 
daughters, France enters on an era of gambling, debauchery, 
extravagance, wit and license. Louis XV participated, some- 
what coldly, in all this, but for one Louis as for another, the 
life of parade and " representation " is of the first importance. 
This life has a splendid setting, especially at Versailles, where 
everything is arranged for the pleasure of the eyes. The park 
is an open-air salon and everywhere the panorama of court life 
unfolds in gorgeous extravagance. Louis XV plays the actor 
all day long; his dressing is a drama in five acts, and Frederick 
the Great said that he would have appointed a dummy monarch 
for these functions. Neither king nor courtier has any time 
for business; everybody is careless or stupid about politics and 
expenditures. The grandees also " represent " and entertain 
enormously, in the capital and in the country. Their main duty 
is hospitality, as their chateaux still witness. " Leur grand 
talent est le savoir-vivre," and their real business is society. 

For those fortunately placed, the social life of the epoch 
must have been delightful. " Qui n'a pas vecu avant 1789," said 
Talleyrand, " ne connait pas la doceur de vivre." 
Never was life conducted with more amenity, never 
were its details and processes managed with such attention to 
the agreeable and the artistic. From childhood on, the convent- 
bred women were educated chiefly to be attractive and beautiful, 
the men to be gallant and pleasing. Private life was nothing, 
public pleasure and display were everything. " We are," sighed 
Voltaire, "the whipped cream of Europe"; and the whole age 
was marked by a careless levity. Pastimes and pageants, fetes 
galantes and theatricals, prodigality and gaiety rang the chimes 
of a universal and continuous carnival. From a faded pastel, 
a page of Marivaux, a picture by Watteau, comes a delicious 
perfume, as of lingering violets. Many gossiping records, hun- 
dreds of engravings, and particularly the stately or voluptuous 
paintings of the period show us lords and ladies perpetually em- 
barking for the Cytherean Islands or enacting the set comedies 



THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 

of their lives. That is why private theatricals were the rage; 
the aristocracy performed and posed in life itself, and at least 
they carried the pose through to the very scaffold. 

In all this the role of woman is supreme. In politics, the 
succession of royal mistresses forms almost a dynasty, just as in 
Power of literature the dynasty of salon-leaders is all-impor- 
Women tant. In this age of art and artifice, woman is con- 

sidered the chief artistic product, the embodiment of the pleasure- 
ideal. As an ingenue, she is handed over to her husband and the 
world, and the latter quickly supplants the former in her interest. 
Every day a dozen pleasures solicit the senses, refine the taste, 
agitate the mind. The day of a Marquise, from her reception 
on rising to her masked ball in the evening, reads like some 
impossible " romance of high life." Yet her power is real enough 
and often her capacity. She rules the fashions, the king, the 
court, writers and artists. Devoid of moral sense as these 
women mostly were, the more intelligent among them (Mme de 
Tencin, Mme du Pompadour) had a real knowledge of men and 
affairs, and the others had at least charming tongues and faces. 
Some show a fundamental common sense, a critical sense that 
goes to the core of questions ; and always they possess the prime 
social art, the art of conversation, free, gay, delightful, in- 
fluential, whose charm still reverberates in their letters and 
memoirs. 

It was an age of great talk, and nowhere does this appear more 

conspicuously than in the salons which dominated the minds and 

habits of many writers. " All this literature," says 

The Salons Taine ^ u wag gpoken before y. wag wr i t ten." The 

socialization of French thought and art was never more evident. 
Even in non-literary circles, there are traditions of witty culti- 
vated conversation, under the " laws " of good taste and good 
company. The dynasty of literary salons began with the 
Marquise de Lambert (c. 1710-33), who yielded her scepter and 
subjects to Mme de Tencin (c. 1730-49), who in turn was suc- 
ceeded by Mme de Geoff rin (1749-77). A rival dynasty was 
that of the Marquise du Deffand (c. 1740-80), part of whose 
power was usurped by Mile de Lespinasse in 1763. The dates 
are those of the actual social sway of each lady. The great 
feature of the eighteenth-century salon, as distinguished from 



THE SALONS 367 

that of the previous period, is that it actually amalgamates, 
often on an equal footing, the writers and the cultured public. 
From now on, the salon really helps writers, financially and 
socially, launches them, gives them desirable contacts, initiates 
the success of the play or poem, influences the distribution of 
prizes and makes academicians. 

This tendency started with Mme de Lambert. Her house was 
called the " antechamber of the Academy," half of whose mem- 
Mme de ^ers s ^ e was a ^ one ^ me credited with creating. 

Lambert She is described as an " honnete femme, moraliste 
sans pedantisme," highly considered in every way. She was a 
woman of sense, cultivated without affectation, who checked 
gallantry and promoted some fusion between good society 
and writers. It is to be noted, however, that she had two dis- 
tinct days, one for the elite and one for the rank and file of 
literary men. 

The four chief figures whom one was likely to find in any or 
all of the salons were Fontenelle and Voltaire, whose long lives 
Mme de covered both dynasties; Montesquieu, whose corres- 

Tencin pondence shows that he had to do some delicate 

balancing between the rival reception-days of the great ladies; 
and the President Henault, a scholar and wit, who occupied an 
intermediate ground between society and the young Republic of 
Letters. Fontenelle and Montesquieu were welcome at the house 
of Mme de Tencin, whose chief pet, however, was Marivaux. 
This indicates that she was more interested in the sparkle of 
wit than in social guarantees, and in fact Mme de Tencin holds 
a much freer salon than that of Mme de Lambert. She had 
been the mistress of the Regent and of others; then, reforming, 
she decided to found a bureau d' esprit * which was the main 
resource of unreligious elderly women at the time. In character, 
she was an audacious and ambitious woman, adroit, fond of in- 
trigue, strongly intelligent and imaginative. Intelligence and wit 
were what she demanded of her guests, and her salon was the first 
where the writer counted for his own merits, on a par with the 
aristocrats. His hostess gave him full liberty and encourage- 
ment. She was a good listener, looked out for the comfort and 
entertainment of her "menagerie," enjoyed their social comedies 
and sallies, and helped them fill the salon with intellectual fire. 



368 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 

Fontenelle's " poetized astronomy," the subtlety of Marivaux, 
Montesquieu's thoughtful arguments were applauded and fostered 
here. Already there were cosmopolitan visitors, like Chester- 
field and Grimm, while Mme de Tencin, with little dignity and 
much eagerness, gave and took freely from all. The other 
salons of the century carry on the tradition of these brilliant 
gatherings. 

Quite different in character was Mme de Geoffrin, who stands 
witness to the growing force of the bourgeoisie. Without birth 
Mme de or conspicuous charm, she held her circle together 

Geoffrin through her steady sense. She helped to bring plain 
truth and sincerity, of sentiment and language, back into repute. 
She was a severe woman, something of a prude, putting the 
damper on any show of license as well as any political free- 
thinking. Her home was the great resort of the philosophes; 
their discussions and personalities she really liked and en- 
couraged. The positive and practical tendencies of this group 
chimed in well with her own personality, intellectual, forthright, 
somewhat cynical. Horace Walpole speaks of her excellent 
powers of observation, her common sense, her cleverness in 
securing desirable guests and in making them play up. She 
took over the survivors of Mme de Tencin, added such figures 
as Marmontel and Galiani, the witty Neapolitan, and she 
brought forward artists, like Greuze and Van Loo, who were 
hardly received elsewhere. But it was the philosophes who gave 
the tone at Mme de Geoff rin's. 

Her rival, Mme du Deffand, was extremely aristocratic, not 
fond of the philosophers (save Voltaire), preferring the stately 
Mme du Classic tradition. She was haughty, despotic, and 

Deffand for twenty-five years quite blind. She sought refuge 

from the darkness of her mind and life in the company of dis- 
tinguished writers and visitors from abroad. Hers was essentially 
the aristocratic and cosmopolitan salon. Her suppers brought 
together the cream of the court and church, as well as writers 
and intermediate people like the President Henault and Lord 
Chesterfield. If writers were in the minority, her salon was at 
least given over to theatrical and literary novelties. One day 
the actress Clairon would recite Phedre, another day the latest 
philosophical pamphlet would be discussed. It is strange to see 



THE SALONS 369 

this rather arid and bitter nature turn to an impulsive ro- 
manticism in her old age. She became devoted to Horace 
Walpole and sustained with him a correspondence, which, 
together with her letters to Voltaire and others, constitutes one 
of the most interesting monuments of the time. She had a 
strong vital personality, much insight into character and a 
brilliant wounding wit; these qualities appear fully in her 
correspondence. 

In 1763, the Marquise du Deffand's companion and helper, 
a certain Julie de Lespinasse, found that she could no longer 
Mile de Dear w ^ n the old lady's caprices and withdrew to 

Lespinasse set up housekeeping for herself. This she did in a 
modest way, but the unforgivable thing was that she carried with 
her many of Mme du Deffand's brightest parlor ornaments. The 
elite of intellectual Paris climbed the humble stairs of Mile de 
Lespinasse, for she had probably the most winning personal 
charm and the most responsive mind of any of these ladies. 
An intense passionate soul, imaginative and romantic, she be- 
came the great friend of Dalembert and threw herself with zeal 
into everything that concerned the Encyclopedie, for which she 
provided an " intimate boudoir and laboratory." Courtiers and 
soldiers also came to her, distinguished churchmen and foreigners. 
She exhibited no trace of Mme de Geoff rin's prudery or timidity ; 
she and her set were afraid of no powers in earth or heaven. 
Diderot's writings give the tone, absolutely emancipated in every ' 
field. Julie de Lespinasse was wonderfully endowed, she had 
more real knowledge than the other women, she was an om- 
nivorous reader and a genuine inspirer of literature, an authentic 
genius herself, keen at reflection and rejoinder, clever in assorting 
people. She lives in literature as the writer of the most remark- 
able personal letters of the century, letters to an unworthy lover, 
which " still burn the paper on which they are written," so tense 
they are, so passionate, so simply and powerfully appealing, in 
their frank exaltation and tenderness, their delicate perception 
and understanding. It is evident that her great charm consisted 
in her ability to appreciate and listen to others. Small wonder 
that a woman like this received the homage of the extraordinary 
men who surrounded her. 

Enough has been said to indicate the overweening influence 



370 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 

of the salons upon literature. Most of the works of the period 
are written under this influence and many writers, from Fonte- 
Salon nelle and Voltaire through the minor poets, are " pro- 

Influence on tected" or inspired by ladies of fashion. The re- 
Literature S ults were not always fortunate. The salon taste 
required writers to be " popular," witty and above all agreeable. 
That is why natural directness, concrete imagination and per- 
sonal feeling are long excluded from literature, and with their 
exclusion belles lettres became infected with a " colorless ele- 
gance." But Rousseau and Diderot largely escaped the con- 
tagion; and for another kind of literature, the earlier bureau 
d'esprit or the later salon philosophique was no bad foster- 
mother. It is the literature of exposition and discussion that" 
the salon refines and clarifies. It encouraged the play of intel- 
ligence and wit, the polished expression of ideas in clear attrac- 
tive untechnical speech. The habit of genteel conversation and 
gossip permeates not only the numerous Discours, Lettres, En- 
tretiens, but the various fields of knowledge. " Spirituelle, lumi- 
neuse, instructive, mais seche et impersonnelle, telle est notre 
litterature du XVIIIe siecle, et c'est ce que signifie litterature 
des salons." The salons helped, at any rate, to give a being and 
a hearing to the New Liberalism. 

Two other important influences of the period were the vogue 
of the sciences and that of English authors. The incentive toward 
the first issued in part from England, since the methods of Locke 
and Newton became popular during the first half of the century. 
Montesquieu indulges in physical experiments, the 
Regent has a chemical laboratory, Voltaire espec- 
ially promotes Locke's sensationalism and Newton's physics. 
In this he was encouraged by Mme du Chatelet, who herself was 
more addicted to mathematics. The latter science tends to 
become supreme, as Dalembert warns us, about 1750. Great 
ladies take up the various sciences, study physics, chemistry, 
natural history, even anatomy, follow pet courses at the Sor- 
bonne and have their portraits painted in laboratories. The 
Academies of Science become important not only at Paris, but 
in the provinces and even at Berlin, where Maupertuis, the 
discoverer of biological evolution, is perpetual secretary. The 
name of Buffon and the main interests of the Encyclopedia bear 



THE INFLUENCE OF ENGLAND 371 

witness to the inspiration and value of the natural sciences 
throughout the century. 

The vogue of English literature and philosophy is almost 
unlimited. It may be summarized by saying that nearly every 
The English English author of note, from Shakespeare down, at- 
Influence tracted attention in France during this period, and 
that almost every French author is indebted to some Englishman. 
In fact, just as France had previously gone to Italy and Spain 
for method and material, she now goes to England. The men- 
tion of certain salient facts and personages will make this clear. 

Voltaire successfully launches the English vogue in the four 
main directions of philosophy, science, politics and belles lettres. 
The general literary impulsion was three-fold: 
Manifesta- towards an interest in Shakespeare ; towards English 
tions rationalism and Deism (Locke, Bolingbroke, Col- 

lins, Toland, and others) ; and later towards a sentimental re- 
action. Thus the two main French movements, skeptical phil- 
osophy and Rousseauistic Romanticism, were in considerable part 
based on an English background. Of the four great names of the 
century — Voltaire, Montesquieu, Rousseau and Diderot — the 
first three visited England with significant results, and all four 
were considerably affected by English influences: Voltaire, by 
Locke and the Deists, by Pope, Shakespeare and others ; Montes- 
quieu, by the liberal English constitution, whose fame he spread 
throughout Europe; Rousseau, especially by Richardson; and- 
Diderot, by Richardson, Sterne and Shaftesbury. The Grande 
Encyclopedie was modelled) on the original of Chambers (see Bk. 
IV, Ch. I). Translations of English authors are numerous and 
popular; a mere list of them covers twenty pages in Lanson's Bib- 
liography. Every author of consequence is translated, some of 
them several times, by such men as Prevost and Letourneur. 
" Bibliotheques anglaises " or " Bibliotheques brittaniques " ap- 
pear as anthologies or compendiums. The Queen Anne writers, 
as was natural, are the most favored before 1750, and after that 
date the contemporary sentimental school. The latter would 
include, as dominant names: James Thomson, for the return to 
outdoor nature; Young's Night Thoughts for melancholy com- 
bined with religiosity ; Sterne, who brought in " Phumour " to- 
gether with a rather sickly sentiment; Richardson, for bourgeois 



372 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 

sentiment and morality; and the misty, melancholy or pseudo- 
epic features of Macpherson's Ossian. All these authors were 
eagerly read, and even today a whole scholarly literature circles 
around the reputation and influences of such English writers in 
France. The cosmopolitanism of the age inclines towards the lit- 
erature of the " North," thus preparing the way for Mme de 
Stael and for many currents of Romanticism proper. 

The eighteenth century exercises a wide fascination, because 
it offers enough to attract the most varied types of mind. The 
aristocrat, the epicurean and the artist find there 
oncusion & certain ideal of elegance, wit and beauty. The 
liberal skeptic and the democrat observe how from the ruins 
of the old order emerge most of the principles of modern pro- 
gressivism and humanitarianism. These opposing tendencies are 
reflected in the literature of the period. The traditional genres, 
especially poetry and drama, still partly preserve the courtly 
ideal; the New Philosophy urges other ideals, chiefly of the 
liberal kind. It will be our task, in the next two Books, to trace 
these conflicts and developments, first in philosophy, then in 
belles lettres. 



BOOK II 
THE NEW PHILOSOPHY 

CHAPTER I 

THE POPULARIZERS : 
BAYLE AND FONTENELLE 

In a preceding chapter we discussed those writers of -the 
transition who on the whole belong to the age of Louis XIV. 
In that age there appeared two men who really belong to the 
eighteenth century. By their views, methods and knowledge, 
Bayle and Fontenelle are true precursors of Voltaire and the 
Encyclopedists. 

Pierre Bayle (1647-1706) was primarily a Protestant, in the 
full sense of the word, both as regards religious upbringing and 
the inquiring tendency of his mind. Born near the 
Pyrenees, of a persecuted Huguenot family, he was 
banished from France and taught successively at Coppet and 
Rotterdam. In Holland, he settled among the refugees, of whom 
Jurieu was chief. Bayle's liberal and skeptical spirit caused him 
to protest against the excesses of Protestantism itself, and, driven 
out of his professorship, he spent the remainder of his life in 
theological disputes and a varied literary activity. Yet he was 
a mild passionless scholar, caring little for practical affairs or 
for pleasure. As one biographer says: "All the life of Bayle 
was absorbed in his thought, in the search for human truth and 
the devotion to reason." 

Besides his great Dictionary, Bayle published anonymously 
several pamphlets, of which two have real importance. His 
Pensees sur la comete (1682) were ostensibly written 
to relieve superstitious minds of the fear that comets 
presaged disaster. But in attacking superstition, Bayle also 
launches several ideas that assail the current orthodoxy: it is 
unlikely that Providence interferes, by prodigies or miracles, 

373 



374 THE POPULARIZERS 

with the course of nature; there is a wide difference between 
the principles and the practice of believers; the atheist may be 
a well-behaved person; and tolerance is always to be recom- 
mended. The last tenet is also the key-note of another pamphlet, 
the Commentaire philosophique sur le " Compelle Intrare " 
(1686), a protest against the Papal bull " compelling " every- 
body into the church. 

Bayle's fame and influence, however, derive mainly from the 
Dictionnaire historique et critique (1697), which has been para- 
doxically styled the " Bible of the eighteenth cen- 
" Diction- tury." This work was ostensibly compiled to correct 
naire" the mistakes of a dictionary already issued by a 

certain Moreri. As a matter of fact, it is an encyclopedia, almost 
the first of its kind, containing in its great folios all the learning, 
thought and critical power of the chief savant of his time. The 
extended footnotes, where Bayle feels at his ease to gossip and 
digress, are the most interesting part of the work. Its salient 
features are, first, the use of modern scientific and critical meth- 
ods ; a very great erudition, including much Latin and far-fetched 
knowledge; the insertion of allusions and anecdotes of doubtful 
taste; and a peculiar confusion of subjects and arguments, used 
to insinuate skepticism and to throw the reader, particularly the 
censor, off the track. Faguet calls the work less a dictionary of 
knowledge than of what Bayle knew. The extent of his knowl- 
edge is thus stated by the same critic: 

Ce qu'il savait c'etait la mythologie, l'histoire et la geographie 
ancienne, l'histoire des religions ... la theologie proprement dite, 
la philosophie, l'histoire europeenne du XVIme et du XVIIme 
siecle. 

Add to this list such subjects as jurisprudence, philology, and far- 
ranging biographies, and it will be seen that, as regards Expan- 
sionism, the author outstrips his own age and announces the 
eighteenth century. 

Bayle's general method shows a " veritable esprit scientifique." 

He is not strong on the natural sciences, but in other fields he 

evinces the spirit of objective research, curiosity, 

impartiality and exactness. His two main ideas 

are relativity and tolerance. Since in every direction he finds 



BAYLE 375 

only " des verites particulieres," it behooves us to tolerate and 
not to persecute the views of our neighbors. So Bayle, in an 
indirect and insinuating way, is a tranquil skeptic of the most 
thorough sort. In the thick of the old regime, he gave intellec- 
tual credence to no authority, no tradition and no dogma. The 
significance of his philosophy, far more destructive than system- 
atic, is best realized by following the workings of his skep- 
ticism in the domains of metaphysics, morality, religion and 
history. 

Except where he uses it as a weapon against theology, Bayle 
is skeptical about metaphysics. He warns us of the dangers 
General °^ ^he °^ philosophic spirit with its sterile dialectics, 

Philosophy and he thinks metaphysical speculation vain, because 
there are no absolutes. His own philosophy, like his religion, 
underwent vicissitudes. He leans to Descartes and to la raison 
as the criterion of truth, but he recognizes that reason is often 
obscured and prejudiced. All philosophers are " inventors of 
conjectures," who entertain us sometimes, but cannot prove 
anything. Truth, that " belle inconnue," is forever to be sought 
but never to be reached by speculation. Such a negative creed 
is neither high nor deep, but it is a good instrument for ana- 
lysing other creeds. Starting with a thorough knowledge of 
ancient philosophy, the skeptic passes in review many modern 
theories, especially those of Descartes and of Leibnitz. Bayle 
records various controversies concerning the notions of sub- 
stance, soul and movement. His own tendency is to hold to 
the world of sensible fact and reject metaphysical explana- 
tions. 

Bayle is more interested in problems of practical morality, 
though here we are confronted with some contradictions in his 
thought. On the one hand he suggests a relative 
standpoint: morals and manners vary with latitude, 
and Sparta and China have rightfully their own conceptions 
of behavior; this view is considerably developed by the eight- 
eenth century. But on the other hand there is a universal law, 
applicable everywhere, and making its appeal directly to the 
conscience and the reason of man. Reason, however, is gen- 
erally conquered by the passions, which rule men and manners 
and found societies. Hence average morals are likely to be based 



376 THE POPULARIZERS 

on the essential passions. But the true guide is an innate 
and individual moral conscience, together with the light of rea- 
son ; for while " la puissance de la raison s'est perdue, sa lumiere 
s'est neanmoins conservee"; and Bayle supports the Protes- 
tant doctrine of the " errant " or free individual conscience, 
which is the voice of God speaking in man. The majority are, 
nevertheless, always making mistakes, for only a few sages suffi- 
ciently control their passions to submit to reason and to " nat- 
ural " morality. The latter is based on the usages of civilization, 
and Bayle has little regard either for primitivism or for perfecti- 
bility. He believes only in a limited progress, chiefly in the 
spheres of knowledge. His is a morality of experience. 

Bayle's early misadventures, his establishment among the 

refugees and his cast of mind, all contributed to make theology 

his main preoccupation. But here again he investi- 

60 ogy gates only to attack. The orthodox outworks, as 
built up by church -fathers, rabbis or commentators, he demolishes 
to his own satisfaction. As regards central dogmas, he suggests 
certain contradictions in Biblical texts and a certain laxness in 
Old Testament morals (" Les plus grands saints ont besoin qu'on 
leur pardonne quelque chose ") , and again he holds that miracles 
are contrary to natural laws. Otherwise he leaves matters of faith 
and revelation almost intact. Into that domain he throws in- 
soluble mysteries, such as the problem of free-will and the exist- 
ence of evil, and his chief contention is that faith and reason 
should be absolutely divorced — the dogmatists are to be shorn 
of rational support. The best argument for the existence of God 
is to be found in the Credo quia absurdum attitude — "I believe 
because it is beyond belief." The attributes of Divinity are very 
doubtful, and in this connection Bayle revives the startling theory 
of Manicheism. According to reason merely, the universe is 
best explained as ruled by the rival deities of good and evil — 
God and Satan. This hypothesis was suggested by Bayle with his 
customary doublings and reserves. If we then add an atomic 
theory, according to which each particle of matter is bound up 
with and animated by spirit (modern monism) , we have the two 
most positive doctrines of Bayle. 

Historical researches constitute the greater part of the Dic- 
tionary. Bayle anticipates modern carefulness about sources 



BAYLE 377 

and gives the spirit of contradiction free play. Finding errors 
everywhere, he really respects and desires the truth. Historical 

truth for him consists in a series of small verified 
History factg ^ dissociated from legend and the partisan pas- 

sions of man. He shows a lack of hero-worship, an effort to ra- 
tionalize and lower the great figures and patriarchs of the past. 
He indulges in pleasantries, uses comparative treatment and 
suggests the " higher criticism." All this Voltairianism is best 
illustrated by the famous article on David, which created a 
furor, was suppressed, reintroduced, and circulated in thousands 
of pamphlets. In general history, the method is the same, though 
employed with a freer hand. By depreciating the value, as 
evidence, of such ancient writers as Plutarch and Livy, Bayle 
lines up with the Moderns in the Quarrel. By contemptuously 
dismissing the legends of heroic Greece and of early Rome, he 
rejects the artistic view and helps inaugurate historical posi- 
tivism. In dealing with French history, he is a genuine road- 
breaker, doubtful of accepted authorities. Trying to keep his 
neutrality in all quarrels, he disliked but made fair statements 
about the Turks, the Papacy, and even the Jesuits. He makes, 
then, a general crusade against tradition, whether historical, 
theological or philosophical. 

The tone of the Dictionary is sprightly, especially in the foot- 
notes. Like the later philosophes, Bayle was careful to serve 

his heavy diet with the sauce required. Yet his 

style, in spite of verbal felicity, is without grace 
or suppleness — " diffuse, lache, incorrect," as Voltaire calls it. 
Bayle was less of a stylist than a supreme dialectician and a 
laborious man of letters; he helps to found literary journalism 
by his Nouvelles de la Repwblique des lettres (1684-87), the first 
important clearing-house for new publications and ideas. Sainte- 
Beuve calls him the genius of criticism, in the widest sense, 
on account of his versatility, curiosity, equilibrium and independ- 
ence. But he had small appreciation of literary beauties. 

Bayle is the chief skeptic between Montaigne and Voltaire, 
with each of whom he has much in common. Yet he is not wholly 

a yhilosophe, because he is moderate and systemless. 
oncusion -g-^ g ^.^ j e g aC y was his method: he thought it pos- 
sible to reach sure facts in all positive fields of knowledge, in his- 



378 THE POPULARIZERS 

tory and ethics, as well as in physics ; the negative application of 
this is seen in his attack on revelation and philo- 
sophic dogma. Doubting the watchwords of the com- 
ing century — humanity, progress and nature — he would have 
found the propagandists too violent, as they found 
him too mild. But the philosophes, often without 
giving Bayle the credit, use the Dictionary as their " arsenal,' 7 
whether for information or for arguments. Eleven editions 
were published within forty years. Voltaire, Montesquieu, 
Diderot, private citizens and memoir writers, public figures 
like Frederick the Great, all bear witness to the extraordinary 
influence of Bayle. It was largely exercised in negative direc- 
tions ; he cleared the ground for the steam-roller of the Encyclo- 
pedists. 

The life of Bernard de Fontenelle (1657-1757) is richer and 
more varied than that of Bayle. It lasted exactly a century, 
less one month. Fontenelle could speak of the con- 
on ene e temporaries of Richelieu to the contemporaries of 
Rousseau, and the annals of literature record fewer lives of fuller 
extent and interest. Born at Rouen, he was educated mainly by 
the Jesuits, and he always kept some friends among that body. 
Visiting Paris, Fontenelle came early under the influence of his 
uncles, Pierre and Thomas Corneille. The great Corneille was 
then in his gloomy last days ; the more alert and sociable Thomas 
was really the companion of Fontenelle. He introduced his 
nephew to the editors of the Mercure galant, and this journal 
published the youth's early poetic endeavors. 

The scientific studies of Fontenelle were of more con- 
sequence than any of the dramas and operas by which he hoped 
Chief *° wm f ame - It was a ^ er the failure of one of these 

Writings that he decided to retreat to his province and make 
more sure of his ground in physics and geometry. From Nor- 
mandy he brought out the Dialogues des morts (1683). These 
dialogues, deriving from Lucian and cast in the same mold as 
Landor's Imaginary Conversations, had a considerable success. 
The Parisians enjoyed hearing historical celebrities talk down to 
their level in* the matter of philosophy and up to their level in the 
matter of wit. Next came the Entretiens sur la pluralite des 
mondes (1686), which were the first fruits of Fontenelle's popu- 



FONTENELLE 379 

larizing genius. He could now talk science to the " belles mar- 
quises " and remain interesting. That same year saw the publi- 
cation of the Histoire des oracles, the last of the trio of master- 
pieces that made Fontenelle's fame. His mind was now set on 
winning a place in the Academy, which he obtained, after four 
attempts, more on his reputation as a wit than as a scientist. His 
reception there was an event; his uncle Thomas delivered the 
address of welcome, and Fontenelle, in his reply, praised the 
other Corneille to the detriment of Racine and the Ancients 
generally. 

Having, as he thought, attained in literature, he could hence- 
forth turn his attention wholly to science. The earlier youthful 
Fontenelle is mainly esprit; the latter is mainly scien- 

e cien is ^.^ popularizing. His universal curiosity sought 
satisfaction alike in laboratories and in personal relations with 
men of science. He was no specialist, but he knew enough of 
geometry, astronomy or physics to associate with specialists and 
learn from them. He had a born aptitude for acquiring and dis- 
seminating knowledge; and the members of the Academy of 
Sciences recognized this when in 1697 they crowned his ambition 
by making him perpetual secretary of that body. This office 
Fontenelle rilled with genuine ability. His labors here hardly 
belong to the province of literature, but tended much to the dif- 
fusion of knowledge. He wrote a large readable History of tire 
Academy, which appeared with annual regularity, and he insti- 
tuted the composition of Eloges on his fellow-academicians, which 
were admirable specimens of eloquent propaganda. 

Another way in which Fontenelle represented science was 
through the role that he played in society. During nearly sixty 
The Social years he was the king of such gatherings as the salons 
Lion of Mme de Lambert and of Mme de GeorTrin. He 

was a " delicious " talker, an excellent listener, a promoter of 
amiable conversation, in which he displayed the prime qualities 
of subtlety and skill. The recollections of his youth came to 
enhance the triumphs of his age. At ninety-five he was almost 
venerated — a monument to be visited, an oracle to be consulted. 
He washable to prolong his life, because he cared for his health and 
eluded material responsibilities. The decline of vitality in him 
was almost imperceptible and he died in the odor of serenity. 



380 THE POPULARIZERS 

Poetic and other tributes were showered upon his memory to a 
fantastic extent. 

Yet the character of the man is not sympathetic. La 
Bruyere's " portrait " of him, under the name of 

arac er Cydias, has been mentioned: 

Prose, vers, que voulez-vous? il reussit egalement en Tun et 
en l'autre. ... II a un ami qui n'a point d'autre fonction que de 
le presenter dans les maisons comme homme rare et d'une exquise 
conversation. . . . Cydias evite uniquement d'etre de Tavis de 
quelqu'un. . . . C'est un compose du pedant et du precieux, en qui 
neanmoins on n'apercoit rien de grand que Fopinion qu'il a de 
lui-meme. 

Another satirical portrait is to be found in Voltaire's Micro- 
megas — where the scientist appears as the Perpetual Secretary 
of the Academy of Saturn. Fontenelle's best friends, particu- 
larly the women, admitted that he had very little heart or 
soul. His social mildness and amiability adequately veiled his 
fundamental egotism. The most important work of his life 
was not the History of Oracles or of the Academy — it was 
the happiness of M. de Fontenelle. He made no sacrifices 
either for his friends or for his ideas. He was gallant with 
women, but as Mme de Lambert complained, he never loved 
them. An intellectual epicurean, he remained always moderate 
and cool. 

His three chief books have already been mentioned and will 

shortly be discussed. Besides these, there are such critical 

essays as the Reflexions sur la poetique, also his 

or s v j ewg on ^ e ec i ogue an( j on th e Quarrel. 1 He was 

too much of a bel esprit to have the true feeling for antiquity. 
His notions about the pastoral are that Vergil is too coarse and 
that country life must be vaguely indicated and conventional- 
ized. The Reflections on Poetry are decidedly prosaic; and 
Fontenelle's whole attitude towards literature is neo-classical. 

The Dialogues des morts were composed when Fontenelle was 
only twenty-six. They are partly "philosophic," with strains 
"Dialogues of preciousness and gallantry. Sappho and Petrarch's 
des morts" Laura argue about the tender passion in a discur- 
sive manner which would have pleased Mile de Scudery more 

1 See above, Bk. I, Ch. I. 



FONTENELLE 381 

than Petrarch. In fact, few of these historical personages 
really speak for themselves or their age; they are modernized 
mouthpieces and they are much too witty. Subtle always and 
occasionally profound, the book swarms with ideas thrown out 
with youthful abandon. The dialogue is often quite engaging, 
and Fontenelle cleverly pairs off striking contrasts: Anacreon 
converses with Aristotle, Scarron with Seneca, Phryne with 
Alexander. They all argue indefinitely because — and here is 
the philosophical importance of the book — the method em- 
ployed is still the Cartesian analysis as regards intellectual 
matters. 

The Histoire des oracles went through five editions by 1707. 
After Bayle, this book is the first indirect attack of the new 
" Histoire des s P^ r ^ on Catholic orthodoxy. Its arrangement and 
oracles" composition are done with skill. It is mainly a 
(1686) translation and digest of a learned Latin work by 

a certain Van Dale. Fontenelle accepts the latter's view that 
the common opinions about pagan oracles, first that they were 
inspired by demons and second that they ceased with the coming 
of Christ, are false. But the bulky arguments of the original are 
condensed, illustrated, linked together and written up with clear- 
ness and charm. Nowhere did Fontenelle's intelligence find a 
happier field. He formally recognizes the truth of Christianity 
and even the probable existence of demons, but such statements 
of conviction could barely deceive his contemporaries. He be- 
gins very soon to bring forward arguments against the behavior 
of the early Christians and the authority of the church fathers. 
The authority of the ancients, of course, is exposed to frequent 
sarcasms. What does hold for Fontenelle is the scientific 
method, and that is a question of facts and deductions. The 
ancients were blind enough to believe in the oracles, though 
fraud was written on the face of them; and the moderns still 
believe the pseudo-historical things about the oracles that he, 
Fontenelle, set out to overthrow. In overthrowing them he 
suggests what he would like to overthrow next; and the hidden 
moral of the book is, If oracles are contrary to fact, why not 
miracles? 

The Pluralite des mondes is still more scientific in content. 
Its high importance is that it practically begins the popular- 



382 THE POPULARIZERS 

ization of science, which has gone on uninterruptedly ever 
since. It is the most celebrated and well-timed of Fontenelle's 
"Pluralite works, and it shows his usual ingenuity in recon- 
des mondes " ciling learned matters with the requirements of a 
polite audience, particularly women. The combination is made 
with an apparent ease and joyousness of execution. His masterly 
hand smoothes out for the " Marquise " the difficulties of the 
Copernican universe, passes lightly over details, and dexterously 
spins into her view the elaborate solar systems. The language 
is always easily clear and shows at times an amplitude rising 
to the heights of the subject. Its vigor of vision at the close 
makes the Marquise implore mercy: "La terre est si efTroyable- 
ment petite." But Fontenelle's constant point is that man is 
smaller still. 

Some of his scientific ideas may be indicated. He believed, as 
did Bayle, in the fixity of the laws of nature, their necessary 
Fontenelle's continuity. He was one of the first to promulgate, 
Ideas before the Academy, that conception of the soli- 

darity of the sciences, the interdependence of knowledge, which 
has helped the cause so much. He believed in the progress of 
this knowledge. Yet there were serious gaps in Fontenelle's 
literary equipment. He had neither much imagination nor wide 
observation. His fondness for wit and " ornaments " frequently 
operated against the best taste and against enthusiasm. His 
intellectual keenness was sometimes attained at the expense of 
sentiment and conviction. Finally, he was hampered by pru- 
dential considerations in the search for and the 
His aue d e f ense f truth. But he adds to the domain of 
literature the popularization of scientific facts, and he insists 
upon their rapports. His influence is not easy to estimate, for 
it is largely diffused; Voltaire, for one, profited by the lessons 
of Fontenelle. In his line he ranks among the pathfinders of the 
new century. 



CHAPTER II 
VOLTAIRE: LITERATURE AND LIFE 

The life of Voltaire (1694-1778) is an epitome of the eighteenth 
century. Versatility, longevity, great activity — these are the 
salient characteristics of his career. His incessant 
Life energy displays itself no less in literature than in 

living; in his case the two things are inseparable. No more in- 
teresting and representative life was ever lived by a man of 
letters. To narrate only the chief events and contacts, five 
periods, of differing length, may be considered. First, his fash- 
ionable and tumultuous youth. 

He was born in Paris of respectable bourgeois stock on both 
sides. His father, Francois Arouet, was an intelligent notary. 
Arouet le jeune, known to the world as VoltaireT'was 
put to school with the Jesuits and then entered a 
law office. He was also introduced into the brilliant " Societe du 
Temple," a group of free-thinkers founded by Saint-Evremond. 
The young Arouet began boldly as a poet. He competed for 
Academy rewards, satirized that body, and won the attention of 
the Cafe Procope and the liberal wits. But soon the Regent 
quietly imprisoned him, in May, 1717. It is with this Hate that 
Voltaire's public career really commences. GEdipe was already 
on the boards, and after many intrigues the author was freed from 
prison in order to get this tragedy acted. Its success was com- 
plete and widespread. 

Voltaire took naturally to " la bonne compagnie," which he con- 
sidered the source of literary reputation. Therefore he usually 
Worldly conciliated this inner circle, and it is to his credit 

Success that, by a mixture of cleverness and perseverance, he 

improved the rank of the litterateur during his century. For 
himself, he saw clearly that social independence needed to be 
guaranteed practically, and he set about making a large fortune 
by adroit speculation. We may pass over the details of his 



384 VOLTAIRE: LITERATURE AND LIFE 

courtly and theatrical intrigues. Other plays had not duplicated 
the success of CEdipe, but the Henriade was soon to appear and 
attain a vogue astonishing for an epic. So far, Voltaire stood 
almost entirely for belles lettr.es, being rated at the time of his 
flight to England as an excellent dramatist and an amusing poet. 
That flight was caused by a break in the social edifice which he 
had so carefully built up. He ventured to gibe at a stupid noble, 
the Chevalier de Rohan. Voltaire was seized and beaten by the 
lackeys of this lord, who then refused the writer's challenge to a 
duel and had him shut up in the Bastille. Raging at this second 
imprisonment and its cause, Voltaire was shortly released. But 
in order to spare the Chevalier de Rohan, the authorities decided 
to exile the poet. He embarked for England, with mingled feel- 
ings of bitterness and eagerness, ready for the strongest intel- 
lectual influence of his life. This was probably in May, 1726, 
when Voltaire was in his thirty-second year. 

The sojourn in England constitutes the second important phase 
in his life, and its significance is out of proportion to its brevity. 
The dates are still subject to dispute, but it is prob- 
able that he remained in the country rather more 
than two years. His contacts were various and fruitful. He had 
already known Bolingbroke, who counted for so much in his 
philosophy, and with whom he now spent some time. Among 
other writers who entertained and influenced him were Pope and 
Swift. His interest in Locke and Newton shaped his practical 
philosophy, the leaders among the Deists made him a partisan of 
natural religion, association with men of affairs gave him his 
exaggerated conception of English liberty — free government, 
free thought and free writing — and his attendance at the theaters 
resulted in his introduction of Shakespeare into France. He 
learned the English language and literature fairly well. 

His new experiences and ideas were embodied in the Lettres 
philosophiques (1734), which inaugurated the English vogue. 
He also published, with the aid of clever advertising, the widely 
popular Henriade (1728-30). On the whole, his stay in England 
sobered his thought and directed more definitely his purpose in 
the domains of skeptical philosophy, cosmopolitan criticism and 
dramatic enterprise. 

There was an interlude in Paris before fresh exile. We now 



HIS SOJOURN AT CIREY 385 

find Voltaire producing semi-Shakespearean plays. Zaire, in 1732, 
swept its author's name, as he said, into the " smoke of vain- 
glory." He had not waited for this tribute to spur him on to the 
unceasing labor which was the chief merit of his next decade. 
The Histoire de Charles XII appeared. The Temple du Gout, 
a satire in the vein of Pope's Dunciad, raised a storm among the 
critics of the capital. 

This opposition may have helped to banish him, but the effi- 
cient cause was the publication of the Lettres philosophiques. 
In 1734, Voltaire, anticipating arrest, had fled to 
take up his residence at Cirey, a chateau on the edge 
of Lorraine. The hostess, Mme du Chatelet, was among the first 
women of her time in intellect. The connection lasted fourteen 
years, until her death. It was characterized from the first by 
comradeship in hard mental labor. The Marquise stood for 
mathematics and a Leibnizian universe; she also shared 
Voltaire's interests in Newton and history. Together, they in- 
dulged in the fashionable physics, and they had time left over 
for practical cares and for entertaining. Amateur theatricals 
were frequently in order, also brilliant suppers and conversation, 
after the day's work. In spite of his ailing body, Voltaire seems 
to have had th'e energy for everything. He called himself 
" Peternel malade," but he was also an eternal traveler and 
busybody. Flying visits to Paris and to provincial courts were 
slight distractions to his ceaseless productive activity. History, 
physics and metaphysics do not destroy his abiding interest in 
the drama. Several more plays, together with the scandalous 
Pucelle, belong to the early part of this period. Cantos of this 
mock-epic circulated through Europe long before actual pub- 
lication. 

In 1736 he began the correspondence with Frederick the 
Great, who took at first the attitude of a humble young Tele- 
machus towards his Mentor. The publication of the flippant 
Mondain sent Voltaire flying from the police into Holland. 
From his cordial reception there he stole the leisure to print 
his Elements de la Philosophie de Newton (1738) —and soon 
he was back at Cirey, entertaining visitors and attacking his 
enemies. He had a succession of literary quarrels that lasted 
half a century. The journalist Freron, later ridiculed as Frelon, 



386 VOLTAIRE: LITERATURE AND LIFE 

the hornet, was soon to ply his sting, and the two Rousseaus 
occupied in turn the post of enemy extraordinary. The skir- 
mishing with J.-B. Rousseau belongs to these days, as also the 
bout with the despicable Desfontaines. The latter 's Voltairo- 
manie was an outbreak of scurrility against more deadly epi- 
gram. Shortly afterward, in 1739, the " divine Emilie " (Mme 
du Chatelet) dragged her friend from the Siecle de Louis XIV 
to a round of festivities in Brussels and then in Paris. 

The correspondence with Frederick had gone on, with extrav- 
agant compliment and mutual adoration. The Monarch had 
written a refutation of Machiavelli and then refuted himself 
and disappointed Voltaire by invading Silesia. But before this 
the two most remarkable men of their age had arranged a meet- 
ing which passed delightfully. Mahomet was produced in Paris 
(1741) and met with great applause, until its attacks on 
fanaticism were twisted by enemies into the semblance of " in- 
famous blasphemy." The authorities once more intervened, 
and Voltaire left the city in disgust. But he soon tried again 
with Merope, which gave him one of the most dazzling pre- 
mieres on record. 

It is about this time that Voltaire's fourth phase, combin- 
ing his Parisian with his Prussian celebrity, may be considered 
as inaugurated. With his dramatic success and 
Pans with deft religious prostrations and protestations, 

he made a second bid for the Academy and again failed. 
He fell back on diplomatic missions to Frederick, sanctioned 
by the French court, but at that game the King proved himself 
far cleverer than Voltaire. In 1745, he was again in Paris 
with a playlet, won some court favor, superintended festivities 
and was appointed Historiographer Royal. This wedge once 
driven in, it was not so hard to win the smiles of the Pompadour 
and even the benedictions of the Pope, who actually accepted 
the dedication to Mahomet. Finally, Voltaire was elected to 
the Academy (1746). But falling into disgrace at court, he and 
the Marquise had to flee overnight. They went into hiding, first 
at Sceaux, and were later received by the good-natured 
Stanislaus, King of Lorraine and protector of a handsome guards- 
man and minor poet called Saint-Lambert. We need not dwell 
on Mme du Chatelet's infatuation for this lover, her abandon- 



VOLTAIRE: LITERATURE AND LIFE 387 

ment of Voltaire, his rage and grief, and her death, which was 
the greatest affliction of his life. He found himself back in 
Paris, where he set up an establishment with his niece, Mme 
Denis. He sought distraction in a theater of his own, playing 
tragedies in opposition to the gloomy Crebillon, discovering the 
great actor Le Kain. Voltaire's tales were also running through 
delighted Paris at this period. But Frederick the Great had 
renewed his invitation, and this time the guest was ready. He 
obtained an ungracious leave of absence from Louis XV and 
arrived at Potsdam in July, 1750. 

The first months in Prussia were a genuine delight to the two 
men in Europe who were wholly capable of appreciating each 
other. Not only was Voltaire lavishly provided 
Prussia £ or . k e wag publicly honored and feted in a way 

certain to stimulate his vanity and pride. Whole theaters rose 
at his entrance; royal apartments were given him to work in; 
royal consorts smilingly excused him from their heavy dinners; 
and he was the chief light of the royal suppers in that little 
octagonal room which contained night after night the con- 
centrated wit of Europe. Officially he was Court Chamberlain 
and the arbiter and polisher of the King's literary endeavors. 
These varied joys the exile paraded in letters to his niece, but 
he already doubted if the glory could last. 

The rift came when the visitor began illegally speculating 
through the medium of a usurer, whom Voltaire dragged through 
a rather disgraceful lawsuit. Frederick stood coldly aloof. The 
quarrel with Maupertuis followed. This eminent if socially 
stupid mathematician could not get along with Voltaire. He was 
President of the Berlin Academy and could bear no rival near 
the throne. Voltaire found his opportunity, satirized Mauper- 
tuis in the Diatribe du docteur Akakia, and convulsed the court 
with laughter. Frederick, however, was estranged, and it be- 
came necessary for Voltaire to leave. The two parted with the 
semblance of amity. But at Frankfort Voltaire was arrested by 
the royal orders and detained several weeks. Possibly through 
Frederick's influence the return of the native was balked by 
the French government on the frontier; also a pirated edition 
of the Essai sur les mceurs rendered official opinion in France 
intractable. 



388 VOLTAIRE: LITERATURE AND LIFE 

Where was Voltaire to turn? He was now sixty years old. 
Neither king nor priest in any of the Catholic countries would 
tolerate him. During the three years that he had 
wi zer an S p en ^ w fth Frederick, his literary accomplishment 
had been slight. The same may be said of his previous cour- 
tier-life in Paris. He now wanted leisure, peace and health. 
He sought them first just outside of Protestant Geneva on the 
property he called Les Delices; and then at his famous estate 
of Ferney, which was really in Burgundy, but next to the Swiss 
frontier. Thither Madame Denis came as his housekeeper, and 
he rolled up his sleeves for the literary fray. 

The Siecle de Louis XIV came out in 1751. The pirated ver- 
sion of the Essai sur les mceurs called for his own definitive 
edition, which he delivered in 1756. The same year saw his most 
earnest philosophical poem — that on the disaster of Lisbon. 
Two years later the masterpiece of Candide appeared. In the 
meantime, Voltaire's first home had become a rendezvous for the 
gayer life of Geneva, and he had, as usual, established a private 
theater. The stricter Calvinists objected, notably J.- J. Rous- 
seau, and Voltaire, after several skirmishes with the Gene- 
vans, thought himself happier out of Switzerland. Just across 
the border, at Ferney, he was henceforth absolutely his own 
master. 

At this point we may pause to consider his strictly belle- 
tristic activities, including, where necessary, some few produc- 
tions of the Ferney period. In the first place, it is evident that 
such a life will leave its mark on composition, whether in the 
direction of facility and haste, or of actuality and vitality. The 
divisions to be dealt with here are poetry, fiction and history. 
Voltaire's theater, as well as his pamphleteering and philoso- 
phie, will be treated separately (see Bk. Ill, Ch. I and Bk. IV, 
Ch. II). 

His poetic, as well as his dramatic performance, follows in the 
main his theories and corresponds to his nature. In the more 
serious forms of verse — the epic and the ode — a 
Verse constant sense of the rules, combined with a natural 

lack of elevation, makes for dulness and an absence of warmth. 
In the lighter genres — epistles, tales or impromptus — Voltaire's 
gaiety, grace and talent appear unrestrained. Even his corres- 



HIS VERSE 389 

pondence is interlarded with verses. He wrote a great many and 
of almost every kind: dramatic, epic, mock-epic, narrative, di- 
dactic; odes, satires, epistles, critiques, and especially vers d' oc- 
casion. Some idea of the content and character of his chief works 
may be given. 

La Henriade or La Ligue, as it was first called, portrays the 
period of the religious wars and glorifies the name of Henry IV. 
Voltaire evidently hoped in this poem to write the great national 
epic that had been vainly awaited since the time of Ronsard. 
But it was too late for the indigenous kind of epic, and despite 
many admirable verses and descriptions, La Henriade remains 
decidedly artificial. Voltaire's odes, for the most part, are cold 
and restrained; they evince rhetorical preoccupations and that 
fondness for capitalized abstractions so characteristic of the 
century. His didactic poems are more important for philosophy 
than for art. This is seen in Le Pour et le Contre (Epitre a 
Uranie), the Discours en vers sur Vhomme, the Poeme sur la loi 
naturelle, and the famous Poeme sur le desastre de Lisbonne. Of 
these, the first and the last show the most fire and finish; the 
other two, longer, stiffer in style, and perhaps more profound, 
consist mainly of moralizings in the vein of Pope. The latter's 
Dunciad may also have furnished the idea for Voltaire's Temple 
du Gout, a critique and satire on contemporary letters, written 
in mingled prose and verse. Addison's Campaign probably in- 
spired Voltaire's retort in the Poeme de Fontenoy, where his 
muse for once is clearly patriotic. Among his satires may be 
mentioned Le Mondain, or " Apology for Luxury," a subject ger- 
mane to the spirit of the times. 

But it is rather in the hundreds of light verses, loose leaves 
from his portfolio, that Voltaire's deft hand and ready wit appear. 
The stanzas and epistles, arising from all sorts of occasions, are 
addressed to most of the celebrities of the time. Frederick is 
apostrophized as the "Solomon of the North" and Mme du 
Chatelet is thus adjured: 

Si vous voulez que j'aime encore, 
Rendez-moi Tage des amours. 

On the bewildered head of Lefranc de Pompignan is heaped a 
succession of stanzas, beginning respectively with Pour, Qui, 



390 VOLTAIRE: LITERATURE AND LIFE 

Quand, etc. — a rapid fire of impudent and stinging wit. The 
manner is usually the genre badin, the light verse of rather free 
stanzaic form, often epigrammatic and always of a graceful 
easy flow. The stories in verse are scarcely to be distinguished 
from the stories in prose, save that in the former the Voltairian 
qualities are likely to appear with more emphasis on decoration 
and a frequent suggestion of La Fontaine. Among the most 
amusing are Ce qui plait aux dames and La Begueule. 

The philosophic contes in prose are probably, in modern eyes, 
the best known and best liked portion of Voltaire's work. Ten 
or twelve of these would constitute the most artistic 
volume of all his contributions to literature. They 
are novelized pamphlets — but they are also delightful apologues. 
The rapidity of action, the brilliancy and potency of style, the 
shrewd doses of milder philosophy, and the constant play of a 
laughing intelligence rank these tales among the world's little 
masterpieces. Objection has been made to the intrusive person- 
ality of the author — but his personality is worth intruding. An- 
other reproach is the lack of character-drawing, and it is true 
that the people are silhouettes, though sharply defined. Judging 
from several standards of today, particularly that of dramatic 
concentration, we can see how the tales might have been bettered ; 
but the Oriental apologue of the eighteenth century was a special 
genre, with rules and practices of its own. 

The usual form, briefly, is this: personages of queer and some- 
times symbolic names (Candide, Micromegas) are set to travel- 
ing in strange countries ; the East is the favorite field, though we 
may have a Huron in Paris (Ulngenu) or terrestrials in other 
worlds. Either their experiences are designed to illustrate some 
one principle dear to the philosophes (Candide) , or there is a suc- 
cession of skirmishes along philosophic, economic or sociological 
lines. The eighteenth-century " veil " is thus applied, not only to 
the (alien) setting, but also to the personages, often disguised 
acquaintances of Voltaire's, and to the ideas, which are both 
stated and symbolized. The idea of relativity is constantly pres- 
ent, because of the comparisons involved. 

For instance, in the first of the series, Le Monde comme il 
va — Vision de Babouc, Persepolis represents Paris, and the 
question of destroying the city is posited through a series of 



HIS PROSE 391 

tableaux. Zadig, drawn from many sources, intimates many 
morals. Episodes and adventures of the wandering prince, 
cosmopolitan conversations, a hermit, and detective methods 
that anticipate Sherlock Holmes — such are the elements that 
diversify a rambling narrative, whose chief message seems 
to be that there is much uncertainty in human affairs. Micro- 
megas (" The Little-Great One ") deals with interstellar visita- 
tions and satirizes Fontenelle as the secretary of the Academy of 
Saturn. It preaches relativity in insisting that size and other 
apparent advantages are matters of comparison (cf. Gulliver's 
Travels). Candide (1758), the most famous exemplar of the 
conte philosophique, is also the most artistically told and unified. 
The burning earnestness that animated the Poeme sur le desastre 
de Lisbonne is still present in Candide as a deep, partly hidden 
ground-tone. The surface of the story reveals the familiar Vol- 
taire — the controlled mockery of an optimism blind in the face 
of senseless and endless misfortunes, the dazzling wit evidenced 
in sustained caricature, the spontaneity of handling and the 
rapidity of movement. The chain of adventures simply shows 
the travelers as constantly falling from the frying-pan into the 
fire. The characters stand on their feet here better than else- 
where, particularly Pangloss the Leibnizian, who gives the ironic 
key to the story by declaring that all is for the best in the best 
of possible worlds. 

The merits of Voltaire's style are conspicuous in these and 
other contes. He mixes the conversational with the dignified 
Oriental manner, but he stamps all with his own image. The 
main features of this style are its swiftness, its smoothness and 
graceful wit. The sentences fly to the mark like poisoned 
arrows. Voltaire is the ablest manipulator of that style coupe 
which has succeeded to the long sentences and elaborate 
rhetoric of the previous age. 

As historian also, Voltaire still has his interest and value. 
He added much to historical conception and he relativized much 
in historical treatment. Before him history had 
18 ory been largely a matter of dry compilations or of 

rhetorical generalities. Voltaire and Montesquieu show critical 
care and some modern sense of values. To these qualities they 
add literary talent and a general appeal, turning history into 



392 VOLTAIRE: LITERATURE AND LIFE 

a notable example of the better side of the salon influence. 
Voltaire's special achievement was to rationalize the subject 
and to consider as its chief content the march of human civil- 
ization. 

With his usual universality, he wrote every kind of history: 
the annalistic, the biographical, the political and the philosophi- 
cal. The biographical is brilliantly exhibited in the Histoire 
de Charles XII of Sweden (1731), where Voltaire's mind 
undergoes and communicates the fascination of the individual 
leader — a capital illustration of Carlyle's " great man " theory. 
The narrative and dramatic interest of this kind continues to a 
considerable extent in Voltaire's masterpiece — the Steele de 
Louis XIV (1751), where the writer still sees the "enlightened 
despot " as the main figure of his age. Louis and the able 
men around him are viewed, however, less as conquerors 
than as civilizers. It is above all " l'esprit humain," as de- 
veloped in a great period, that interests Voltaire. Hence his 
treatment of the epoch, while allowing for biographical data 
and even court gossip, presents first a large tableau of the 
political history of the reign, then includes chapters on com- 
merce, sciences, arts, letters and religion. This treatment has 
been criticized as too analytical and too piecemeal; but it is 
still largely the procedure of scientific historians today. 
Voltaire was particularly qualified to undertake such a survey, 
and the result is that the Steele de Louis XIV, though in certain 
ways too panegyrical, is the best work of its peculiar kind in 
the century. The author here shows tendencies to regard 
any great age as primarily marked by its successes in literature 
and the arts ; to make reason rather than religion the light of 
civilization; to view periods not so distinguished as benighted 
and worthless; and, curiously enough, to exalt the empire of 
chance, of the small apparently unrelated fact, in human affairs. 
Such tendencies appear still more conspicuously in the wider 
scope of the Essai swr les mceurs et l'esprit des nations (first ed., 
1745-46; more fully, 1756). 

This work is a universal history and practically the first his- 
tory of civilization. Purporting to begin where Bossuet left off, 
Voltaire yet has much to say, by way of introduction, concern- 
ing the ancients and the nations of the Orient. In many respects 



HIS PROSE 393 

this book shows its modernity, not only in such ideas as humani- 
tarianism and its estimates of social service, but also in the 
novelty of its method. For instance, the chance-theory seems 
here a part of Voltaire's "pyrrhonism" (compare Le Pyrrhonisme 
de I'histoire, 1768), or of the skepticism that makes him doubt 
the facile explanations of priests and populace, as well as the 
unsupported testimony of such writers as Tacitus, Bossuet and 
of course Herodotus. The skeptic is opposed to the inclusion in 
serious history of various legends and stories, particularly such 
as seem to debase human nature. Voltaire everywhere recom- 
mends the test of natural probability and of sound, sufficient evi- 
dence, without party prejudice. 

In the Essai, the " spirit that denied " sometimes dimmed the 
author's philosophic view of causes and led him into various 
forms of injustice toward certain influences. Modern progress 
for him starts definitely with the Renaissance. He can appreci- 
ate the role neither of the early Christians, nor of the perennial 
Jews, nor of the Middle Ages, with their feudalism, their 
" horrors and miracles," their greedy Popes, their religious wars 
and schisms, their crusades, ill-conducted and ill-starred. He 
simply removes the romance from the Middle Ages and considers 
them as almost wholly " barbarous." Voltaire is often occu- 
pied with wilfully smashing windows. Otherwise, the treatise 
gives a fairly spaced view of the past; it has been called a 
monument to the spirit of humanity, which Voltaire deems 
" greater than the Pyramids "; and its influence and utility are 
alike indisputable. It subordinates, of course, Bossuet's Provi- 
dence as a manipulator of history, it shows the preponderant 
importance of les mceurs, of industrial and cultural manifesta- 
tions, it often gives a panorama rather than a profound expla- 
nation of the course of empire, and it offers interesting pictures 
of the world outside of Europe. Voltaire's hatred of war is 
pronounced; usefulness to the race is considered the final test 
for movements and for men. 

Voltaire's rationalizing of the Middle Ages, of the miracles 
and crusades, is akin to the method of modern research, which, 
however, rises above his prejudices. For in spite of all his 
cautions about judging each age relatively, by its own purpose 
rather than by that of another period, he frequently falls into 



394 VOLTAIRE: LITERATURE AND LIFE 

the latter blunder. In virtues and vices he remains intensely 
dix-huitieme ; and he is too often inaccurate in detail. Yet he 
gave his century its record of civilization; he thereby stands at 
the threshold of modern history, and his two main works are 
still highly considered, though corrected, by the historians of 
today. 



CHAPTER III 
MONTESQUIEU 

Into the restless world of the Regency came the old Roman 
profile and allegiance, the aristocratic temper, the inquiring om- 
nivorous mind of Charles-Louis de Secondat, who 
His Career took the name of Montesquieu (1689-1755). Born 
near Bordeaux, of a family belonging to the noblesse de robe, he 
underwent the influences of this Gascon heredity and habitat 
throughout his well-ordered life. He was educated, with em- 
phasis on the Latin classics, by the Jesuits; he was trained in 
legal procedure, though his interest was rather in the " spirit " 
of legislation; he entered Parisian circles equipped with those 
powers of observation and irony which produced the brilliant 
and iconoclastic Lettres persanes (1721). His preoccupation 
with wit and social satire was further strengthened by his 
association with the leaders of the salons. All four of these 
were at various periods of his career among his helpful friends: 
the Marquise de Lambert pushed him for the Academy, 
Mme de Tencin addressed him in a tone of intimate raillery, 
the others placed him among their pet lions. Already at 
Bordeaux, Montesquieu had indulged in that cultivation of the 
physical sciences which is at once a sign of the times and of his 
own positive bent. Now in Paris he attends the Club de 
l'Entresol (see below, p. 409) , an organization for political discus- 
sion. These two interests, especially the political, were newly 
and vitally stirred by Montesquieu's travels, which began in 
1728, after his election to the Academy, and ended three years 
later in England. 

This sojourn in England represents a turning-point in his 
thought. As in the case of Voltaire, what had been held in 
solution was now precipitated, and the result in each case is 
a fresh and significant conception of liberty. Returning to 
France, Montesquieu divides his time between Paris and his 

395 



396 MONTESQUIEU 

estate of La Brede, shows his practical sense in the administra- 
tion of the latter, disposes of his " charge " as President of the 
Bordeaux Parliament, and concentrates more and more on his 
masterpieces. The Grandeur et decadence des Romains (1734) 
was probably largely conceived before his trip to England. 
The Esprit des lots (1748) was the result of two laborious dec- 
ades, varied only by occasional journeys or visits .and the 
usual cares of life. 

The Latin characteristics of Montesquieu are amply evidenced 
by contemporary testimony and his own aptitudes. But he is 
His an " old Roman " crossed with a Gascon magis- 

Personality trate. The first appears in the stoicism which 
makes him reserved in emotion, which leads him to justify 
suicide, and stamps his correspondence as less expansive than 
that of his friends. The Gascon appears in a more natural, 
though frequently checked, disposition toward liveliness and 
exaggeration in expression. The magistrate appears in his 
domestic masterfulness and sense of leadership; the aristocrat, 
in his emphasis on heredity and the Parliaments. In fact, he 
goes back to the Classic ideal of I'honnete homme, ripened by 
many contacts and tastes, holding to standards of moderation 
and virtue, not without his point of pride. More in the spirit 
of his own time are his humanitarian qualities and his tendency 
to view things from a sociological and philosophic standpoint. 

His mind is primarily legal, in that he is accustomed to the 
weighing, sifting, and coordinating of evidence. But he is also a 
philosophe' and a relativist in his concern with the 
His Mind new m t eres t S) his distrust of the old absolutes of 
metaphysics, church and state. More than this — he is the fore- 
most generalizer of his century. No such grasp of principles, no 
such display of synthetic ability had yet been known, and Montes- 
quieu is only surpassed by Bayle for wealth and catholicity of 
knowledge. History, law, ancient lore, contemporary travels, 
physical sciences — the President learned and linked them all 
into his system. The search for moral and physical causes impels 
all his work. He is an investigator and a spectator first; and then 
he is a philosophe. Like the leaders of the Renaissance he is 
infinitely curious — " that noble curiosity " for more and more 
knowledge — and the Esprit des lois is once interrupted by a 



THE LETTRES PERSANES 397 

startling yet characteristic invocation to the Pierian Muses. He 
has no other sentiment for art than that. He names as " great 
poets " four philosophic thinkers — Plato, Malebranche, Shaftes- 
bury and Montaigne; his taste is of the colorless neo-classic 
variety; and positivistic science has now replaced the sweep of 
the imagination. Yet he is not distracted from " the proper study 
of mankind." His impressive dominance in half-a-dozen fields 
of thought will appear from a survey of his works. 

The Lettres persanes came out anonymously, and as a con- 
temporary prophesied, the book " sold like bread." Better than 
any other product of the time, this satire holds the 
Persanes" mirror up to the Regency, faithfully reflecting its 
(1721) mocking spirit, its license and its ferment. Nothing 

so daring, so amusing and brilliant, had yet been allowed in print, 
though many such ideas must have floated among the 
free-thinkers and the coffee-houses. To such an extent do 
the Lettres persanes crystallize this jrondeur criticism and revolt 
that Montesquieu never formally acknowledged the work and 
in later life seemed ashamed of it. 

The sources, in form, are negligible ; much of the matter comes 
from Chardin's Voyages en Perse. Montesquieu's plan is that 
two Persians, Rica and Usbek, visiting Paris, shall write home 
their apparently naive and unprejudiced account of French 
customs. The frame-work is then a veil, similar to that used by 
Swift and Voltaire, behind which a great many indirect blows can 
be delivered. Dealing with actualities, the book is partly journal- 
istic ; it is partly fiction, in that w T e have the story of the women 
whom the Persian travelers left behind them. The harem at- 
mosphere thus introduced is heavy and unwholesome. The illusion 
of the Oriental viewpoint is, however, skilfully maintained 
through most of the book. There are also " portraits," in the man- 
ner of La Bruyere, of such public figures as the busy inventor, 
the reporter, the speculators and the dandies. There are certain 
other Classical and conservative features, seen in the balanced 
style, the frequent appeal to " reason " and " good sense," the 
aristocratic contempt for writers, pedants and sycophants, some- 
what indiscriminately mingled. 

The Lettres persanes has its serious as well as its frivolous side. 
Towards the end, the tone changes and the real importance of the 



398 MONTESQUIEU 

pamphlet appears: it announces not only the Esprit des lots 
but the esprit of the century. The book is nearly always for- 
ward-looking and often revolutionary. 

As regards government, Montesquieu adopts categorically the 
standpoint of the relativist. "The best government is that which 
attains its end with the least expenditure of energy." 
The kinds of governments and their principles are 
sketched very much as we shall see them in the Esprit des lois. 
Only here it is significant that Montesquieu can imagine all these 
principles as obtaining in a Republic, which on the whole is the 
kind of government that he now prefers. He satirizes, not with- 
out regret, the failure of the monarchical and aristocratic regime. 
He sees the French monarchy as degenerate and pleasure-seeking, 
criticizes Louis XIV, and admits the decline of the aristocracy 
with impatience and shame. 

As regards philosophy, Montesquieu states the ideas of the 
relativist and the semi-materialist in connection with the vary- 
ing testimony of the senses and with the persistent intrusion of the 
ego. The divine order of the universe appears less as a matter of 
sublime mysteries than as a manifestation of a few immutable — 
and simple — physical laws. In moral precepts, there is again no 
absolute. Materialism also shows its head in the emphasis on 
the bodily " machine " and in several passages concerning the 
influences of climate and soil, which foreshadow the famous doc- 
trines of the Esprit des lois. 

Believing apparently in natural religion, Montesquieu, in the 
Lettres persanes, openly assails the foundations of Catholicism, 
declaring that it can scarcely last five hundred years, that the 
Pope is an idol worshipped only from habit, that he and the king 
are simply " two magicians." The writer gibes at nearly all the 
standard doctrines, berates the theologians, those super-subtle 
" dervishes," laughs at the Capucin missionaries, takes a fling at 
the temporal power of the church and anticipates Voltaire's 
indictment of the terrible religious wars. We have a defense of 
free-will, as not really discordant with God's power — it is better 
to follow his precepts than to analyze his cloudy attributes. We 
have a distinct approach to the method of comparative religion 
in the passage where a Mohammedan believer condones the 
Christians. Irony still appears in the treatment of these ques- 



THE LETTRES PERSANES 399 

tions, but there is no flaw in the sincerity with which the author 
here and elsewhere stands up for the principles of tolerance. In 
fact, he finds nothing more offensive to the gods than the absence 
of humanity and equity. Justice tempered with mercy is both 
divine and human. So a diatribe against the Inquisition is 
paralleled by one against the cruelty of the Spaniards in the 
Indies, and Usbek, the author's mouthpiece, regrets the revocation 
of the Edict of Nantes. The Protestants are defended as useful 
merchants and artisans, and it is also on grounds of utility that 
Montesquieu suggests what he later partially retracts — the estab- 
lishment of several religions in a state. 

His whole approach to the religious question is, indeed, not 
only from the standpoint of the rationalist, but also from that of 
the tolerant humanitarian and statesman. It is noticeable that 
he allows the Troglodytes their own religion, in order to soften 
manners and to aid virtue. This idea of the creed as service- 
able to the state is in accordance with his conception of social 
solidarity, which lies at the base of the Troglodyte republic. 
Here all labor for the common interest. It is emphasized that 
the general aim is not separable, in a " virtuous " state, from 
the individual good, and such solidarity even reaches the point 
of communism in Montesquieu's doctrine. However, in answer- 
ing objections as to the pernicious effect of the " arts " (indus- 
tries) and inventions, Usbek associates them with the advance 
of civilization, and maintains that they are desirable chiefly as 
creating a state of " luxury," needed for the general welfare. 
This is one of Montesquieu's most idiosyncratic theories. 

Such are the main ideas of this remarkably fertile book. Its 
form has doubtless interfered with a full appreciation of it, es- 
pecially in our own times. Its fragmentary character, its hop- 
skip-and-jump manner, its apparently haphazard construction 
are disconcerting; but it was always Montesquieu's ideal to 
" provoke thought rather than (mere) reading," to stimulate 
by alternate piquancy and depth. His lax construction matters 
less in letters than elsewhere. When the Persian veil is nearly 
dropped towards the end, we are certainly reading the direct 
utterances of a very competent thinker. Contemporaries, we 
are told, pardoned the book's temerities for the sake of its 
gaieties; today one is disposed to do exactly the contrary. 



400 MONTESQUIEU 

In 1734 appeared the Considerations sur les causes de la 
grandeur des Remains et de leur decadence — to give the volume 
" Grandeur et its ful1 and exact] y appropriate title. Like all of 
decadence des Montesquieu's works, it was issued anonymously, 
Remains " but h ere? as with the Esprit des lois, the authorship 
was soon apparent and was not denied. The book is a classical 
masterpiece: classical not only because it is saturated with the 
spirit of Latin antiquity, but French Classical in that it mirrors 
the abiding qualities of harmony, proportion, universal truth 
and dignified style; it is a masterpiece because of these qualities 
and the correspondingly elevated thought, because for once 
Montesquieu reaches artistic unity and balance of parts. The 
history unfolds, indeed, like a Classical tragedy, rising through 
" grandeur " to fall through " decadence," with Pompey as the 
climax of the plot. The dramatic value is enhanced by the 
spectacular, by those visions of men and races which Mon- 
tesquieu draws with so large a sweep. The Roman side of him 
is now thoroughly at home, and you feel the spirit that has long 
known comradeship with Tacitus and Livy, with the imposing 
austere virtues of the Republic, as well as with the graces of the 
later orators. In these respects the book looks backward; but 
it is emphatically of its own century by its method of " con- 
sidering " history. 

Montesquieu is primarily philosophic. He seeks historic 
truth in the " esprit general," in the movement of profound moral 
and physical causes. " The general march drags with it all 
particular incidents." Before him Bossuet almost alone in 
France had represented a concept of philosophic history. The 
two men have similar interpretations of many facts, a like ad- 
miration for antiquity, a like instinct for historical observation 
and induction. But they soar as rival eagles. The idea of 
Providence, the operation of the First Cause dominates the 
panorama of Bossuet, as God the protagonist dominates the 
Biblical dramas of Racine. Montesquieu deals only with 
directly human and natural causes. The power even of the 
Roman religion is scanted in his survey, which analyses mainly 
politics, war, the moral status. The reasons for Roman great- 
ness are founded on the wisdom of the citizens and their " vir- 
tuous " institutions. The decay of these principles spelled the 



THE ESPRIT DES LOIS 401 

decay of Rome, which also suffered from the unwieldy extension 
of the Empire. 

The treatment is suitably elevated, somewhat aphoristic, 
reminiscential of Latin masters, adapting strikingly their 
figures and vocabulary, eloquent, yet not merely rhetorical. 
This famous passage will show us Montesquieu on the heights: 

C'est ici qu'il faut se donner le spectacle des choses humaines. 
Qu'on voie dans l'histoire de Rome, tant de guerres entreprises, 
tant de sang repandu, tant de peuples detruits, tant de grandes 
actions, tant de triomphes, tant de politique, de sagesse, de 
prudence, de constance, de courage; ce projet d'envahir tout, si 
bien forme, si bien soutenu, si bien fini, a quoi aboutit-il, qu'a 
assouvir le bonheur de cinq ou six monstres? Quoi! ce senat 
n'avait fait evanouir tant de rois que pour tomber lui-meme dans 
le plus bas esclavage de quelques-uns de ses plus indignes citoyens, 
et s'exterminer par ses propres arrets ! On n'eleve done sa puissance, 
que pour la voir mieux renversee! Les hommes ne travaillent a 
augmenter leur pouvoir, que pour le voir tomber contre eux- 
memes, dans de plus heureuses mains! 

In handling his sources, Montesquieu is usually careful, 
stating nothing without authority; he sometimes exaggerates 
dramatically, but he never simply perverts ; yet he is not wholly 
critical, in the modern sense; he is too respectful of the ancients 
to question their credibility. Also, he naturally knows little or 
nothing of epigraphy and archeology. These deficiencies, while 
rendering the book old-fashioned, do not deprive it of its prin- 
cipal values. Its philosophic method, as concerned with eternal 
verities, and its consummate literary form remain. The method 
inspired Gibbon and Buckle, and that modern study of the 
ancient city by Fustel de Coulanges (see Bk. VIII, Ch. III). 
Stylistic merits have given this history its place as part of the 
regular education of French youth. 

The Esprit des lots, often considered the greatest work of 
the century, is a book of many facets. Purporting to reveal 
" L'Esprit des ^ e relations of laws to natural and social institu- 
lois" 0748^/tions, it really touches upon nearly every depart- 
ment of civilization, nearly every land and time. It originated 
from a nexus of contemporary discussion and therefore is not 
" created without a mother," as its author proudly declares. But 
he gives here the fullest expression of his own mind and doctrine, 



402 MONTESQUIEU 

though much of the latter has been anticipated in the Lettres 
persanes. It is a pity that the Esprit des lois is the least well- 
written among Montesquieu's works, the most poorly composed 
and directed. 

The main intention and divisions are none the less manifest. 
It expresses essentially the conception of a relativist. Laws may 
represent a struggle towards the type of " eternal justice," but 
more apparently they are and should be the reflection of special 
conditions; or, as Montesquieu's subtitle expresses it, the " spirit " 
of laws consists in " the rapport which they ought to have with 
the constitution of each government, with its customs, climate, 
religion, commerce, etc." To these relations he shortly adds 
other physiographical points, the kind of life led in each country, 
the degree of liberty allowed, and the interaction of laws among 
themselves. They are even hazardously defined as rapports — 
" the necessary connections deriving from the nature of things." 
This idea of a " consensus," of a complex which hangs together 
in a given civilization, constitutes the chief merit of the book in 
modern eyes. Rejecting the theory of caprice and relegating that 
of Providence, Montesquieu, still historical in approach, perceives 
that behind the code of each country stands its mceurs and behind 
them, " certain moral and physical causes." That is his first 
great generalization. His second is that the laws appropriate to 
each country reflect its morale particularly as crystallized in its 
form of government. The third, especially associated with his 
name, concerns the theory of climate and other physical forces 
as variously dominating races and their legislations. All of these 
are relative considerations. 

For years, as he tells us, Montesquieu struggled towards these 
" principles." When the light came, his material fell readily — 
perhaps too readily — into place; first, along the lines of the divi- 
sion and nature of governments. These he divides into despotic, 
monarchical and republican, animated respectively by the prin- 
cipes of fear, honor and civic virtue. He then proceeds, in 
the first ten books, to analyze his definitions, in the Cartesian 
manner, by recording their applications in the fields of education, 
of civil, formal and penal legislation, sumptuary laws and luxury. 
A book on the corruption of the principles is followed by a dis- 
cussion of the connection of laws with militarism. 



THE ESPRIT DES LOIS 403 

Two criticisms may at once be made. The fields in which 
operates the spirit of laws succeed one another, as is evident 
from the last two sentences, in a disjointed and scrappy manner, 
without satisfactory exhaustion and coordination. When Mon- 
tesquieu thought of a fresh rapport, he added a new book. This 
was the method of the works on jurisprudence preceding and 
partly influencing him. The other objection concerns his division 
of governments. The traditional and logical division of Aristotle, 
into governments ruled by one, several or many, is displaced by 
associating the aristocratic with the democratic kind and by 
enlarging the one-man government into the two types of monarchy 
and despotism. The latter is of course a derogation from the 
former, but Montesquieu here proceeds on historical and spatial 
rather than on logical grounds. Broadly, by despotic government 
he always means the Orient, by democratic he means ancient 
republics, by monarchical he means modern western Europe. 
The specific modern applications are usually left to the reader. 
As regards the three principes — fear, honor and vertu, — they 
seem in part acceptable, though with limitations which Montes- 
quieu did not seek to impose. In fact, his insistence throughout 
a good part of the work on returning inappositely to the kinds of 
government and their principles, results in some distortion and 
an excess of simplification. 

With the eleventh book we have a change of basis, and the 
influence of Montesquieu's visit to England is readily seen.- 
He is now preaching the English conception of liberty, as em- 
bodied in the English constitution, with particular stress on 
the balance and division of powers. This part of the work is 
probably the most famous and the most far-reaching in effect. 
Following Locke with some modifications, Montesquieu urges 
the conservation of the monarchy by balancing and separating 
the powers in the three forms with which we are acquainted — 
legislative, executive and judicial. Two lesser books intervene 
before we reach his next great contribution. The potency of 
physical causes appears at its height in the treatment accorded 
to climate and the nature of the land, as they affect the bodily 
machine, character, institutions, and hence laws. Certain 
generalizations here are too hasty, but the main division by 
zones of climate is notable as influencing Mme de Stael, Buckle 



404 MONTESQUIEU 

and much of modern thought. Yet it is significant that just 
as Montesquieu sets manners and customs above laws, so he 
sets moral above physical causes and conceives it to be the 
legislator's duty frequently to contravene the latter. Polygamy 
and slavery may have their raison d'etre in despotism and 
climate, but they are not therefore desirable. 

With Book XIX on the " general spirit " of the nations, the 
truly vital part of the Esprit des lois closes. The rest is more 
and more rambling, though there are interesting considerations 
as to evolution, cautious safeguards as to religion, and learned 
disquisitions on Roman and feudal laws. But the chief points 
have been made, a sociological method has been inaugurated, 
and we may group together some of its more forward-looking 
elements. 

First, an attempt has been made to study the psychology of 
races. Without accepting all of Montesquieu's gleanings from 
books of travel, discounting such flights as those 
to China or Paraguay, allowing for his ignorance 
of natural history and the great modern democracies, one may 
yet see the impulsion, in method and in fact, toward a main 
nineteenth- century preoccupation. Secondly, ideals of tolerance 
and humanitarianism are conspicuous. Along with despotism, 
torture and slavery, religious persecution and unnatural usages 
are accounted for, but ultimately reproved. A faith in progress 
and a belief in some ordering of the universe are occasionally 
expressed. Thirdly, jurisprudence is lifted from its dry and 
dusty tomes to the rank of a human force of the first order. A 
control of legal forms and influences, making for amelioration, 
is suggested. If Montesquieu's growing conservatism, manifest 
also in his attitude towards the monarchy and religion, makes 
him in the large more static than evolutionary, he yet recog- 
nizes development in each legal field or what he calls revolution. 
Finally, a theory of government is combined which will have 
far-reaching results. Holding to the ideal liberty of a consti- 
tutional monarchy, he devises for that a system which has 
been partially conveyed into the American Constitution. In 
France, theorists and legislators have made abundant use of this 
system, which rests essentially on the checking, balancing and 
separating of the three main powers. Montesquieu thus ex- 



SUMMARY 405 

panded French literature to include jurisprudence, the science 
of government and something of political economy. Add to 
these the treatment of philosophical history initiated by the 
Grandeur et decadence des Uomains. Voltaire, in spite of the 
fact that he and Montesquieu were antipathetic, declared that 
the latter had " restored to humanity its lost titles." This should 
mean that the President gave to a skeptical age a rational and 
casual account of itself, as well as of other periods and their 
laws. 

The handling of these matters is, however, not uniformly suc- 
cessful. The salon taste demanded a certain lightness, wit and 
spice. Hence the inappropriate insertions, the false starts and 
the literary caviar which made the Esprit des lois more palatable 
for its contemporaries than for us. Moreover, the work seems 
rather a collection of notes, shot through with fine speculations, 
than an organic whole. Montesquieu's style generally is coupe, 
moving by short jerks, dispensing with connectives and transi- 
tions, lacking Voltaire's grace. But it is often forceful and 
brilliant, and in the Grandeur et decadence des Romains it can 
rise to heights of noble declamation. 



CHAPTER IV 
MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS 

Under this heading will be treated certain moralists, theorists 
and memoir-writers, whose work, for the most part, falls within 
the first half of the century. Few of them are professionally 
philosophes, though the majority are tinctured with the new 
spirit. They are secondary figures who yet have their impor- 
tance historically, as well as through their contacts with better- 
known men. Two moralistes who have won an assured place 
in the records, rather as a matter of personal character than 
by strictly literary excellence, are Luc de Vauvenargues (1715— 
47) and the Chancellor d'Aguesseau (1668-1751). 

The career of Vauvenargues was almost constantly unfortu- 
nate. As a lad he had poor health and received no regular 
Th t d education. He entered the army, and after a brief 
Career of brilliant campaign in Italy he was relegated to the dul- 
Vauvenargues negs f p rov incial garrisons. He was sent on the 
ill-fated expedition to Prague (1742), from which he returned 
with frozen limbs and ruined health. The old Marquis de Mira- 
beau (Carlyle's " Friend of Man ") and Voltaire were among 
his protectors and admirers, and the latter tried, unsuccessfully, 
to launch him in diplomacy. It was through Voltaire's advice 
that Vauvenargues settled in Paris, but he lived there as a re- 
tiring invalid barely two years. He had time to publish a 
single rather imperfect volume before his death. 

Much less than this would have broken a man of average 
caliber; but it is Vauvenargues' strong mark that he remains 
always captain of his soul. Serious and religiously minded, 
his personal force and charm could yet attract a Voltaire and a 
Marmontel. Successive disillusions, in military life, in diplo- 
matic hopes and in literary output — which he considered as a 
last resort — only served to temper the well-forged steel of this 
character. In poverty and agony, his Spartan endurance im- 

406 



VAUVENARGUES 407 

pressed a lighter age, and he gained from his trials that spirit of 
elevation, of integrity and serenity, which shines through his 
writings. These are few in number and mostly unfinished. 
The Introduction a la eonnaissance de Vesyrit hu- 
ms Writings main ( 1746 ) j s not t h e wor k f a thoroughly formed 

philosopher, and though it shows individual penetration and 
fineness of feeling, it is not a masterpiece. Its chief interest is 
that it reveals the humanity of Vauvenargues' nature. Coming 
midway between Pascal and Rousseau, he reacts from the Jan- 
senism of the former in that he maintains the worth of man's 
endowment in mind, sentiment and passions; he anticipates 
Rousseau in the predominant role given to the feelings and pas- 
sions, if virtuously directed. " On ne peut etre dupe de la vertu " 
— and the virtue that Vauvenargues most esteemed was magna- 
nimity. His personal ideal was for a career of glory attained 
through action: " d'employer toutes les activites de son ame dans 
une carriere sans bornes." This desire is visible in all his work 
and gives a personal note of endeavor and of disappointment 
nobly borne to his Reflexions et Maximes, where the best of 
Vauvenargues appears. These contain many excellent judgments 
both on deeds and books. The writer is more concerned with 
moral self-perfection than with general perfectibilite or prog- 
ress. Thereby he belongs to the previous century, whose Classic 
qualities he exemplifies both in spirit and in form. Believing 
in the harmony of man and nature, his eclectic philosophy tends' 
towards simplicity, moderation and the golden mean. His best 
pages (and he should be read in selections) are orderly, harmo- 
nious, and psychologically penetrating. But too often his max- 
ims are either obscure or obvious and his thought is not wholly 
reconciled — defects due perhaps to the shortness of his life. 
As a whole, the work of Vauvenargues presents rather a fine 
promise than a thorough finish. His philosophical system may 
be illustrated by his central much-quoted maxim: " Les grandes 
pensees viennent du cceur." To this a recent writer (Morley) 
has added the proviso: "Yes, but they must go around by 
the head." 

The Chancellor d'Aguesseau was also a man of excellent vir- 
tue, though without Vauvenargues' personal power. Unlike the 
latter, (TAguesseau was extremely well educated, long-lived and 



408 MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS 

favored by every advantage of position and circumstance. He 
came of a good legal stock and was much dominated by the 
stronger character of his father. His originality was further 
overlaid by considerable erudition; the Jansenists were his 
moral masters. He had essentially the judicial mind, excellent 
on the bench or in directing assemblies, but inapt for closer 
action. As procureur-general, as Chancellor and finally as min- 
ister under the Regent, he instituted various wise laws and 
showed at first a capacity for mediating between 
guesseau ^ e throne and the Parliament. But later he vacil- 
lated and lost his power. He was a " good man and magistrate," 
but not supreme as a writer. His Mercuriales, t or addresses 
before the Parlement (courts of justice), exhibit a respect for 
tradition, a mild persuasiveness and a dignified moral tone and 
style. The style, in fact, is often heavy and slow, an eloquence 
that resembles a diluted Bossuet or Bourdaloue in its elaborate 
solemnity. Like Montesquieu, d'Aguesseau had a thorough be- 
lief in and respect for Justice, which was his ruling idea both 
in theory and administration. His Meditations sur les vraies et 
les fausses idees de la Justice are praised by good critics. He 
shows circumspection rather than vehemence in his manner of 
writing as in his career. A " chretien philosophe," he was con- 
servative and Classical both in taste and in morality. As 
Chancellor, he applied the power of censorship rather severely. 
Saint-Simon comments on his studious intelligence, his piety and 
amiability, together with a certain " paresse "; all of these qual- 
ities are evidenced in the writings of dAguesseau, who was a 
worthy but not highly interesting figure. 

As regards the theory of literature, the final charge of the 
Moderns was led by Lamotte, whose idea was to rationalize 
The Abbe poetry into prose (see below, Bk. Ill, Ch. IV). A 
Du Bos weightier name is that of the Abbe Du Bos, the friend 

of Bayle, whom he resembles in the boldness of his criticism 
and the diversity of his interests. Du Bos touches upon almost 
every field; history, archeology, political economy, theology, 
literature and art. His two important works are; Reflexions 
critiques sur la poesie et la peinture (1719) and L'Histoire de 
VEstablissement de la Monarchic frangaise dans les Gaules 
(1734). As a historian, he is careful in controlling and indi- 



THE ABBE DU BOS 409 

eating his sources, and though he was taken to task by Mon- 
tesquieu for his theories concerning the origin of the French mon- 
archy, the author of L' Esprit des lois owes much to his pred- 
ecessor. As an aesthetic critic, Du Bos follows the Moderns 
in basing genius on a favorable material environment; but 
he is opposed to the rationalistic and mathematical conception 
of beauty which Lamotte and others were propagating; he 
considers that the aesthetic sense has less to do with the mind 
than with the body and that it is almost a sixth sense in itself. 
It is an " immediate and direct perception of the beautiful," 
which is viewed as a physical emotion. Hence the relativity 
of aesthetic judgments, dependent (1) on the individual eyes, 
nerves, etc., of the observer and (2) on variations in 
climate and atmosphere. The emphasis on climate has long 
been considered Du Bos' chief contribution, because of its in- 
fluence on Montesquieu and others. Almost equally valuable 
is his division of the fields of art and their functions, which 
leads up to Lessing. And finally, one should stress a sort of 
experimental attitude towards artistic appreciation. Instead of 
dogmatizing, Du Bos watches himself and other people " react " 
in a picture-gallery or at the theater. He amasses significant 
data from all sources, ancient and modern. He was ahead of 
his time in his sense of the concrete, and the immediate influence 
of his Reflexions was further limited on account of its badly 
mixed composition and its poor style. Today he seems a very- 
advanced and realistic thinker. 

Equally advanced was the Abbe de Saint-Pierre (not to be 
confused with the later Bernardin), who had the honor of try- 
ing to establish a League to Enforce Peace two hundred years 
ago. His was the chief voice lifted in behalf of peace between 
Fenelon and Kant. His own age considered him a kindly harm- 
less Utopian. He was, however, banished from the Academy 
because of his attacks on the monarchy of Louis XIV. Later 
he became one of the founders of the Club de l'Entresol (1724), 
The Club de which nas Deen mentioned in connection with Mon- 
l'Entresol tesquieu. This was an informal club for the presen- 
tation of papers and for liberal discussion. As a sort of " acad- 
emy of political and moral sciences," it anticipated, in a milder 
way, the Jacobin clubs of the Revolution. It met in the house 



410 MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS 

of the President Henault, in the apartment (entresol) of the 
Abbe Alary, and among its most important adherents were 
dArgenson, who describes it in his memoirs, and for a time 
Montesquieu and Bolingbroke — about twenty members in all. 
The reunions lasted seven years and then attracted the atten- 
tion of the prudent Fleury, who caused the club to be dissolved. 
The writings of the " philanthropic Abbe " antedate that 
period. Among his chief " projects " were the Discours sur la 
Writings of polysynodie (1718) and the Pro jet de Paix univer- 
Saint-Pierre selle (1713). There was also a much-needed Projet 
de rendre les dues et pairs utiles. Whatever the Utopianism of 
these theories, the first and the last were actually tried out under 
the Regency (see above, Bk. I, Ch. III). The "polysynodie" 
was simply the government by councils, in which Saint-Simon 
participated from a similar desire to make the dukes " useful." 
Saint-Pierre's various ideas on reform mostly sprang from his 
tolerance and his humanity. He is credited with creating the 
word bienfaisance, and his whole tendency was toward practical 
morality and the improvement of society. As regards universal 
peace, his schemes have a striking similarity with the plans cur- 
rent at present. He pleads for a League of Nations 
n eace which shall be primarily juridical, extending to gov- 
ernments the civil status and morality of individuals. It should 
be a permanent association and tribunal, in which the sovereigns 
figure as perpetual allies, making proportionate contributions 
to the expenses of maintenance, submitting themselves to the 
arbitrament of their peers. Where this fails, the force of the 
League is to be called in for purposes of repression. Armaments 
should be greatly reduced, and Saint-Pierre tried to make the 
rulers understand the calamities of war as opposed to the pros- 
perities of peace. The sovereigns are still the leaders and 
spokesmen, because scarcely any writer could then conceive of 
popular representation. Esteemed a visionary by his contempo- 
raries, Saint-Pierre should come into his own when his views are 
realized. 

Passing to the memoir- writers, the one who most worthily 
The Memoirs succeeds Saint-Simon, in individual talent and gen- 
of d'Argensoneral interest, is another member of the Entresol 
group — the Marquis Rene-Louis Voyer d'Argenson (1694- 



D'ARGENSON 411 

1757). He is to be distinguished from his father of the same 
name, a minister of police under the Regency. This d'Argenson, 
nicknamed " la bete " because of his heavy integrity and lack of 
suppleness around court, flourished during the best years of 
Louis XV and was Foreign Secretary about the time of the 
battle of Fontenoy. His Memoir es begin with the death of the 
Regent and come down to Rousseau. They give a thorough 
picture of the period, its political and social intrigues, its chief 
figures, its manners and literature. DArgenson is not really 
" bete " at all. He had a bold rich intelligence, if occasionally 
heavy in manner and style, and he does not lack for wit. His 
mind goes deep enough to penetrate the people and circumstances 
around him and it also reaches out to an elevation and an 
idealism beyond his time. The double value of his memoirs, 
then, is that they give both political narratives and political 
views ; the worth of his own mind is added to that of his observa- 
tions on his age. In ideas, he represents the liberals and the 
philosophes, but he had the power and position of a great noble. 
His program is often prophetic of future reforms, gathering 
around the idea of philanthropy which he shared with Saint- 
Pierre. Among the changes that he urged, the substitution of 
departments for provinces, of prefects for royal intendants, the 
uniformity of weights and measures, the wider establishment 
of provincial courts of justice, have all been realized. His main 
political scheme was to unite the monarchy with popular liberty, 
especially as represented by the municipalities. He really cared 
for le peuple; he portrays excellently the change in popular 
sentiment about 1750, and he suggests how the growing inade- 
quacy and despotism of Louis finally turned the people against 
him. " L'opinion republicaine," according to d'Argenson, was 
born at that time. He comments on the increase of luxury and 
license, the advance of materialistic philosophy, the significant 
hatred of priests. And he foresees and foretells the Revolution. 
D'Argenson, like Saint-Pierre, was a man of vision. His style 
is too often cumbersome and incorrect, but it is personal, full of 
provincial and proverbial expressions, and it is acute in thought 
if not in form. It shows a blunt honesty like the man himself, 
without the characteristics that enliven the pages of de Retz or 
of Saint-Simon. 



412 MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS 

As a whole, the collected memoirs of the century are impos- 
ing in their mass, their interest and their variety. They occupy 
Memoirs in altogether several hundred volumes and no pre- 
General ceding age was so prolific. The greater part of our 

knowledge concerning history, society and literature derives 
from this source, to which one should add the familiar letters 
of the period. The memoirs themselves are divisible into three 
interlocking groups: (1) the formal or impersonal correspond- 
ences, such as the Correspondance litteraire (1753-90) of 
Grimm, Diderot and others, which usually circulated in manu- 
script long before publication; (2) the diary or journal form, 
illustrated by that of the lawyer Marais (1715-37) ; and (3) 
memoirs proper, sometimes based on the preceding form. Few 
of these productions show real literary excellence, but their value 
as furnishing an intimate picture of the times is unrivaled. The 
more one studies the eighteenth century, the more one is im- 
pressed by the saliency of a few score of names, which recur, 
like the reappearing characters of Balzac, in every variety 
of writing; in the memoirs, these historic figures are displayed 
in undress. Another characteristic is the amount of gossip about 
court and capital, which is in evidence everywhere, but particu- 
larly in the correspondances. This is due to the dearth of 
newspapers, which made readers clamor for news from other 
sources. Certain illustrations may be given of the three types 
of memoirs. 

The literary gazette flourished from the time of Bayle to that of 

Grimm and Diderot. A lesser but perhaps a more representative 

„ . name is that of Bachaumont, whose Memoires secrets 

Bachaumont, . 

Marais and de la Repubhque des lettres cover the period 1762-71 

Marmontel They were rewritten from the " register " or recorded 
conversation (which circulated as Nouvelles d la main) of Mme 
Doublet's salon, and they are most interesting concerning the in- 
fluence and apotheosis of Voltaire, the beginnings of Rousseau 
and the importance of the Encyclopedia. Their tone is very free: 
anecdotes, witticisms and irreverent chansons, on the most seri- 
ous occasions, make us realize the brutality which underlay the 
veneer of the century. In his criticism, literary and general, 
Bachaumont allies good sense with a taste for progress ; he gives 
a swift actual view of a literature and a society in the making. 



DUCLOS AND MARMONTEL 413 

He uses the chronicle form, but for our purpose that class is 
best represented bjihe Journal of Marais.the " avocatdes dames.'' 
This is the best reflection of enlightened public opinion under the 
Regency. A disciple of Bayle, an admirer of Voltaire, Marais 
had a wide knowledge, frequented the best company, and was 
strongly Classical in taste. He shows the limited beginnings of 
liberalism, and, in a style marked by simplicity and irony, he 
indulges in the usual court gossip, which he informs with the 
color and movement of life. The third class (memoirs proper) 
may be illustrated by two names: Duclos and Marmontel. The 
former, who became royal historiographer, plans to set forth 
the " history of men and manners n in the first part of the century. 
He is especially at home in discussing the Regency, the early 
literary cafes and the later salons. Duclos was a penetrating 
observer and a rude writer, caustic, piquant. u droit et adroit."' 
Marmontel, as we shall see later iBk. IV. Ch. I), was a milder 
person, who thought more of his own writings than posterity has 
been able to do: but in his time he was a very considerable 
literary figure and his Memoires d'un pere pour servir a Vinstruc- 
tion de ses enfa.us are important as depicting the life of a typical 
man of letters, his early struggles, his necessary prostrations, 
especially before the shrine of Mme Geoffrin. and the final savor 
of success. He gives an agreeable and apparently a faithful 
picture of the middle years of the century, and a certain com- 
placency in narrating his love-adventures — even to his children 
— is perhaps as typical as anything else. 

Finally, no account of miscellaneous writings would be complete 
without mentioning the beginnings of journalism (see p. 289). If 
the work of the nouveUistes or news-mongers ante- 
dates the modern newspaper, the modern review was 
initiated by Bayle and was continued, as a summary and criti- 
cism of fresh publications by various periodicals. The Pour et 
contre of the Abbe Prevost, the Journal Etranger and the Gazette 
litteraire de V Europe were cosmopolitan reviews. More of a 
magazine was the (old) Mercure de France. Two of the most 
important journals were the Journal des Savants and the Journal 
de Trevoux. But the former was scientific in its interests and 
the latter strongly clerical in its tendencies. Probably the most 
representative if not the best of all the literarv reviews was 



414 MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS 

L'Annee litter aire, which flourished from 1754 to 1790, largely 
under the direction of Voltaire's enemy Freron. It presents a 
unity of subject-matter, doctrine and tone, and has been called 
the most interesting and equitable journal of its time. But 
Freron is scarcely more than a fifth-rate critic and his impar- 
tiality is injured by his insistence on praising whatever Voltaire 
dislikes and vice versa. However, he follows the march of ideas 
to a certain extent, admitting the English influence, showing 
the pre-romanticism of the public, though ill-disposed toward 
the philosophes and preferring still the absolutism of Classical 
taste and rules. The many volumes of this review are interesting 
chiefly as reflecting contemporary tastes, opinions and quarrels. 



BOOK III 
THE OLD AND THE NEW GENRES 

CHAPTER I 
TRAGEDY: VOLTAIRE, CREBILLON, DUCIS 

The most important art form of the eighteenth century, the 
greatest in contemporary opinion, was still tragedy. But in 
Voltaire as original excellence tragedy was on the decline and 
Critic was becoming more a matter of critical discussion. 

In dramatic practice as in theory, Voltaire was the leader, and it 
will be well to state here his general position as a critic. First 
it is to be remarked that Voltaire was certainly a devotee of 
good literature. Among his few passions, this was the most last- 
ing; among his few ideals, this was the most conservative. His 
taste, his belief in Boileau, his worship of Racine, all served 
to keep him in the beaten track as regards poetic and dramatic 
principles. Yet his restless curiosity, his devotion to the stage. 
and particularly his interest in English literature, made him 
the advocate of certain novelties pronounced for their time. 

The Lettres philosophiques remains the document which most 
significantly combines these opposing tendencies. Voltaire's 
admiration for the English principle of liberty extends in part to 
English literature. But he prefers the dramatists of the Res- 
toration and the classicists of the Age of Queen Anne — the two 
currents which were conspicuously French. His attitude toward 
Shakespeare is characteristic. This author, " barbarous " and 
" Gothic " as he is, typifies the irregular poetry of the English, 
by flashes of genius no less than by deserts of darkness. His 
" monstrous farces called tragedies " have yet their forceful 
effect. But Voltaire's opinion of Shakespeare became more 
bitter in his later years. Then he complained regretfully to the 

415 



416 TRAGEDY: VOLTAIRE, CREBILLON, DUCIS 

Academy that this " clown " whom he had introduced to the 
French stage was likely to degrade and denationalize tragedy. 
As regards poetry, Voltaire defends that cause against 
Lamotte, Fontenelle and Montesquieu; and reacting against 
their Philistinism, he actually swings the pendulum 
back towards a respect for the Classical tradition 
of form. The Age of Louis XIV was already endowed for him 
with that immutable and crystallized excellence which it pos- 
sesses in the eyes of every " Classical " critic down to our own 
times. Therefore Voltaire can see little or nothing before that 
period; the Middle Ages are indeed the Dark Ages, and the 
word " Gothic," until Chateaubriand, was held a term of re- 
proach. The Voltarian defense of poetry, then, is virtually a 
defense of Racine. Poetry is compact music. It requires rime 
and rules, and in the constraint of these the true artist reveals 
his force. Necessary elements of poetry are harmony, propor- 
tion and especially simplicity, which in the great genres should 
dispense with ornaments and wit. This self-denial Voltaire 
practices usually in his dramatic work. 

Tragedy is the chief subject of his criticism, as it was the 
most serious field of his imaginative efforts. To consider first 
his Classical precepts, he urges Racinian technique 
rage y as regards the principal dramatic rules, the use of 

language and versification, the supremacy of the heart-interest. 
Love, fully depicted and not incidental to the subject, is the 
tragic passion par excellence. Yet love should still be pre- 
sented as a weakness; and other natural affections — witness 
Andromaque and Merope — can also cause strong emotions. A 
distinction is made between the rules and the bienseances, the 
mere dramatic proprieties. The latter may vary, but the former 
are according to " good sense " and are fundamental. Voltaire 
is neo-classical in the narrow logic with which he upholds and 
intensifies the unities, as also in his theory of the " difficulte 
vaincue " — a sort of acrobatic idea that the harder the rime, 
the better the poet — and in his recommendation of a mannered 
artistry of language. This last he considers the principal 
method of outdoing, while elaborating, Racine and Corneille. 
It is " style " that leads to posterity, and verse, necessary for 
tragedy, constitutes its chief artistic beauty. 



VOLTAIRE'S DRAMAS 417 

As an innovator, Voltaire derives his ideas mainly from his 
observation of the English stage and from his personal liking 
for action. So he discusses and experiments with the use of 
crowds, with drawing blood on the stage, with ghosts, and 
generally with more apparatus and " business." The scene 
should be vast and even picturesque — though only in order 
better to display the beauty of sentiments and passions. A 
certain amount of terror may be admitted, the range of subjects 
should be extended — which he amply did — tragedy should still 
inspire the love of virtue and public good, to which he char- 
acteristically adds, " and the horror of fanaticism." 

This body of literary theory scarcely shows Voltaire as an 
original or systematic critic. His doctrine is puristic and 
piecemeal, concerned more with details than with the total 
structure of creative ideas. And it is frequently vitiated by 
temporary conditions, by journalism or by jealousy of great 
names. These handicaps appear in the C ommentaire sur 
Corneille, which " comments " almost to the exclusion of any 
broad criticism of that author. Yet Voltaire's judgments, often 
penetrating in detail and correct in taste, operated through 
his admirers to make him what he desired to be: the ch*ef 
literary authority of the century. His criticism remains history 
ically important as typical of that century, as forcing the re- 
action towards traditional poetry, as establishing a curiosity 
about English literature, and particularly as prefacing the new" 
elements in his own tragedies. 

When it comes to the actual writing of plays, Voltaire is 
divided between his Classical allegiance and his desire to pre- 
sent stirring novelties. Through Shakespeare he 
steps forward towards Romanticism, but he is ever 
looking over his shoulder at Racine. He is essentially a 
dramatist of neo-classicism, more interesting historically than 
absolutely. Barring Zaire and one or two others, his plays have 
little intrinsic appeal today. But they remain the chief 
tragedies of the eighteenth century. The theater was certainly 
Voltaire's main ambition, as well as his great pride and passion. 
He was always ready for amateur theatricals, he discovered and 
promoted professional talent and he wrote inordinately. He 
is credited with fifty-three plays, over half of which are trage- 



418 TRAGEDY: VOLTAIRE, CREBILLON, DUCIS 

dies, offering much variety of subjects and scenery. He uses 
nearly twenty different countries and periods — Greece and her 
dependencies, Biblical lands, Rome of course, Africa and 
America, several phases of the Orient and of France. In this 
respect and in the details of his subjects rather than in their 
general themes, he broadened the limits of tragedy, which he 
also romanticized in the directions of intrigue and action. These 
features will appear from a consideration of his chief plays. 

(Edipe (1718) made Voltaire's reputation. The subject is 
that of the Greek tragedians — the son who has unwittingly 
slain his father and wedded his mother. The play 
v is neo-classical in two respects : the taste for horrors, 

for parricide and fratricide particularly, was just being fostered 
anew by Crebillon; and the heart-interest, overdone by the 
sentimental Campistron, demanded the introduction, in (Edipe, 
of some love-affair. So Voltaire provided the middle-aged 
Jocaste with a middle-aged lover and spoiled what is otherwise 
a well-written and moving drama. A few other, inferior trage- 
dies preceded the visit to England. Returning, Voltaire soon 
shows the effects of this new interest, possibly in his Brutus 
(1730), and certainly in his imitations of Shakespeare {La Mort 
de Cesar and Zaire, 1732). It is a question of transposing Eng- 
lish heroics according to French taste. The first two plays are 
political tragedies, in which an effort is made to deal greatly 
with the interests of state. But Voltaire never quite succeeded 
in this effort and his two dramas, as usual, are important 
mainly for their minor novelties: shifts of scene, senators in 
their robes of state, Caesar's blood-besprinkled corpse, many- 
voiced conspiracies and crowds. 

The one unquestionable masterpiece, the happiest combina- 
tion of old and new tendencies, is Zaire. It is the only play by 
M .. „ Voltaire still acted, and it shows an unusual depth 
and tenderness. For once the author has really 
steeped himself in his story and characters. The latter are 
living and sympathetic figures; the former, romantic intrigue 
though it be, still stirs and seizes with permanent appeal. In 
fact, the universal qualities of Classic tragedy here make their 
final sincere appearance, while the depiction of the chivalry and 
Christianity of the crusaders is a distinct innovation. The sub- 



VOLTAIRE'S DRAMAS 419 

ject of the play is sacred and profane love. Zaire must choose 
between the claims of patriotic religion, as personified in her 
father, and her love for the sultan Orosmane, in whose palace 
she has long been held captive. Becoming jealous of Zaire's 
fondness for her brother (a typical meprise), Orosmane imitates 
Othello by slaying his lady-love and himself. But our interest 
is less in mistakes and recognition-scenes than in the humanity 
of the emotions and the characters. Zaire is a charming heroine, 
and her father, the aged Lusignan, though episodic in his 
appearance, makes an extraordinary effect of virility and 
idealism. 

Alzire (1736) carries the scene to Peru and depicts the 
struggle between the cruel Spaniards and the unfortunate chil- 
dren of the Incas. The author exhibits his usual bril- 
" Alzire' ii anC y i n the treatment of this attractive novelty, 
but the action is more clever than probable. Also the Peruvians 
talk too much like the philosopher. In his maneuvres concern- 
and ing Mahomet ou le Fanatisme (1742), Voltaire 

"Mahomet" flattered the Pope into accepting the dedication of 
a work which contains several veiled attacks on Christianity. 
Le Fanatisme is the truer title, for the personage of Mahomet 
is traduced historically, whereas his fanaticism and that of his 
proselytes is much to the fore. This is Voltaire's first big mani- 
festo against intolerance. He seeks to demonstrate that the 
vice is horrible and that it takes a kind of Tartuffe to be 'a 
religious leader. 

Mon triomphe en tout temps est fonde sur l'erreur. 

Among Mahomet's own errors may be counted his improbable 
self -revelation to an enemy; it is also unlikely that all the vir- 
tuous people should, without knowing it, be members of one 
family, for their ultimate disaster. Mahomet is not a perfect 
play, but it is interesting because of its philosophe leanings. 

Merope (produced 1743) closes the series of Voltaire's rela- 
tively first-class tragedies. He now returns to the classics, 
u n mingling the Greek influence with that of the 

Italian Maffei, to whom he owes his best strokes. 
A mother, trying to avenge her son, almost slays him by mis- 
take; and then, to rescue him, she almost marries his would-be 



420 TRAGEDY: VOLTAIRE, CREBILLON, DUCIS 

assassin. Voltaire portrays maternal love with fair success, 
but not with the power and penetration shown in Andromaque. 
In comparison, Merope seems cold and not sufficiently stirring, 
whereas, since maternal love is the only passion depicted, it 
should be all the more vehement. But simplicity and con- 
centration are for once attained, the language is more carefully 
chosen, and the construction more satisfactory than usual. Of 
all Voltaire's tragedies this play suggests best the feeling of an- 
cient doom. Semiramis is significant chiefly as reviving the ghost 
of Hamlet. Of later tragedies, we need mention only the poig- 
nant sacrifice of L'Orphelin de la Chine (patriotism versus 
parental love) ; and the resuscitation of chivalry again in Tan- 
crede, Voltaire's last success. All his principal tragedies belong 
to the period before the visit to Frederick. After his establish- 
ment at Ferney, Voltaire shows less regard for straight drama 
and more for philosophic propaganda. This element widely 
affects and usually damages his theater; for the tragedie 
philosophique generalizes its thought, even to the degree of be- 
coming cold and lifeless. 

Voltaire's dramatic deficiencies are due partly to the spirit 
of the age — neo-classicism and " philosophic livery " — ■ partly 
to the nature of the man and the way he wrote. 
Defects The majority of the tragedies are hastily and 

feverishly composed. External events hindered concentra- 
tion and meditation. The failure to attain unified force and 
excellence is revealed in plot, characterization and style. The 
first is often a matter of ingenious invention, rather than true 
creation. Voltaire is fond of painful family situations. He deals 
with such themes as parricides and dreadful loves, equally dread- 
ful hates, unhappy wives and unfortunate daughters. Voltaire 
reminds us of Crebillon in the incessant use made of recog- 
nition — unlikely incognitos, followed by family reunions, " la 
voix du sang" suddenly calling out; and of "meprise," the 
suspension of events through somebody's improbable blindness. 
These devices are not according to Racine, yet otherwise the form 
adheres closely to the old Classical lines, and the plots are 
much hampered by the conventional rules. Voltaire's per- 
sonal limitations are seen especially in his depiction of characters, 
who are seldom strongly conceived and individualized. They are 



CREBILLON 421 

remembered, if at all, rather as generalizations than as people. 
A few of the women escape this censure, but the majority of the 
characters lack depth and psychological truth, as their actions 
lack inevitability. They are not objective enough; they are all 
more or less Voltaire, talking as he talks, thinking as he thinks. 
They have distinction, but they lack life. The same tendency 
exists in his style. He aimed at the style noble under all 
circumstances. The care for expression was, in theory, the main 
thing with Voltaire. He is apt to build a play around its purple 
passages, and he lacks sustained force. Also, in copying his 
predecessors, Voltaire tries to weave the embroidery that he 
recommends, and the product is patchwork. A hemistich of 
Racine is completed by a banality, a metaphor from Corneille 
jars with a neo-classic abstraction. At best, Voltaire sought to 
fuse these elements into a monotonous elegance, a pale poetry that 
is seldom natural, falling into rhetoric and vagueness. 

His more positive merits are that generally he keeps up the 
dignity, as he strove to keep up the artistry of tragedy; that his 
language can sometimes charm our tastes by its 
reminiscent and suggestive brilliance; that he has 
written certain fine scenes of tenderness and passion ; that he can 
impart a vivacious color to exotic subjects; above all, that he 
is rich in dramatic constructions, surprises, sudden coups de 
theatre and reversals, imbroglios, trenchant solutions of the 
Gordian knot. He provided more for the eye, more movement 
and " spectacle," than any one before him. He lacked not so 
much tragic skill as the tragic soul, the quality of high serious- 
ness. 

Much of the romantic side of Voltaire is akin to the work of 
his predecessor, Prosper Jolyot de Crebillon, whose lurid and 
unsubstantial melodramas were in great favor during 
the first part of the century. He represents, however, 
but a special point in the development of which Voltaire has 
exhibited the final leisurely curve. The work of Crebillon includes 
eleven titles, the most significant being Atree et Thyeste (1707) 
and Rhadamiste et Zenobie (1711). He keeps thoroughly to the 
conventional form of tragedy, but within that form his talent 
displays itself in several directions. Mistaken identity, recogni- 
tions, and tangled family relations constitute nearly the whole of 



422 TRAGEDY: VOLTAIRE, CREBILLON, DUCIS 

Crebillon's dramatic system. He was credited, above all things, 
with stimulating terror, as in his strongest, most " atrocious " 
play, Atree et Thyeste. This tragedy treats the old subject of 
the inimical brothers. Thyeste had carried off the wife of Atree, 
and Atree henceforth lives only for vengeance, endeavoring to 
use for that purpose the (unknown) son of Thyeste. When 
Crebillon adds the element of Thyeste 's daughter, who is un- 
wittingly in love with the son, he furnishes all the data for a 
typical drama of his school. An extra horror was the cup of 
filial blood which was too much for neo-classical taste. But the 
play is written with power and concentration. Rhadamiste et 
Zenobie is even more illustrative. The subject has close analogies 
with Racine's Mithridate. The heroine (disguised, of course) 
is loved by a whole family, who have been chiefly occupied with 
murdering her own. There are swelling speeches and occasional 
inspiration, but the drama is merely melodrama, with practically 
no truth or life. Crebillon has little depth; he appeals mainly 
to our curiosity or our shocked sensibilities. 

The effort to combine new thrills with old traditions was con- 
tinued by Jean-Francois Ducis, who worshiped Shakespeare by 
the side of Voltaire. An excellent family man and a 
man of feeling, Ducis thought of himself as a " wild 
bird " and a rugged oak. His true character and the compulsions 
of his period appear strikingly in his adaptations of Shakespeare 
— the first, after Voltaire, that were offered on the French stage, 
which they held successfully for two generations. Proceeding 
from partial translations of Shakespeare, Ducis binds and com- 
presses him into the Classical strait-jacket. The results are 
ludicrous for English readers, but they give a most informing 
idea of eighteenth- century requirements. In general, since the 
unity of time is for the most part preserved, the action is much 
foreshortened, the list of characters is reduced by half, neo- 
classic verbiage replaces Shakespeare's lines, and his great per- 
sonages become shadowy and abstract. As novelties, Ducis 
freely shifts the scene, shows early gropings after setting and 
stage-directions, and reflects two tendencies peculiar to the prog- 
ress of the century: long " philosophic " moralizings and a mild- 
mannered sensibilite which prefers happy endings. Of his half- 
dozen versions, we may mention Hamlet (1769), he Roi Lear 



DRAMA UNDER THE REVOLUTION 423 

(1783), and Othello (1792). In this Othello there is talk about 
liberty and equality, a tendency conspicuous in the plays — also 
contemporary with the Revolution — of M. J. Chenier and of 
Sebastien Mercier. These two writers represent the last stage 
of declamatory tragedy. But the Revolution, which changed so 
much, hardly affected dramatic form. The old Classic tragedy 
was still played before the red-capped Terrorists and even before 
the grenadiers of the Empire. That is why the vogue of the three 
men treated in this chapter lasted well into the nineteenth 
century and was superseded only by the full advent of 
Romanticism. 



CHAPTER II 
COMEDY AND DRAME 

The importance of the theater in eighteenth- century life can 
scarcely be exaggerated. 1 Amateur theatricals were the rage 

among the upper bourgeois and aristocratic classes. 
Significance The " Theatre de la Foire " was the folk-theater for 
of Comedy popular entertainments. The two regular establish- . 
ments, the Theatre-Franc, ais and the Theatre-Italien (as re- 
vived by the Regent) rivaled each other in exhibiting the works 
of the chief playwrights. Comedy is a living form, echoing the 
manners, ideas and conflicts of the time. It is usually satiric, 
whether in the lighter vein of Regnard and Piron or in the 
deeper, more universal satire of Lesage and Beaumarchais. 
The last two writers are the greatest of their age in this field. 
The plays of other men, bounded by the conventionalities of the 
form and of the epoch, yet depict that epoch with more super- 
ficial variety than can be found in any other genre. The 
socio-historical value of comedy is then to be added to its 
fluctuating literary merit. 

On the threshold of the century are found several transition 
writers who continue Moliere as regards the comedy of manners, 

of characters, or simply of plot. Regnard (1656- 
Regnard 170Q ^ gtands f or gay intrigue, partly derivable from 

the old gaulois comedy in its free farcical wit. Regnard carries 
the comedie-farce to a high degree of classical finish. He is 
essentially a fun-maker, and his two main qualities are verve 
and gaiety. His Folies amoureuses and his Joueur show that he 
took neither love nor gambling very seriously. His master- 
piece is Le Legataire universel (1708), which resembles Le 
Malade imaginaire. A hypochondriac seems to be dead and his 
would-be heirs combine to seize his property, when he astonishes 
them by coming out of his lethargy. As in so many plays of 

i See above, Bk. I, Ch. III. 
424 



DANCOURT AND LESAGE 425 

the period, the impudent rapacity of master and valet seemed 
natural enough to author and audience. Regnard is merely 
amusing, not original, and not a master either of the comedie de 
moeurs or the comedie de caracteres. 

These two chief kinds of Molieresque comedy were con- 
tinued by others. There had been some suggestions of them in 
the work of Dancourt (1661-1725). His titles — 
Dancourt -^ es Agioteurs, Les Bourgeoises de qualite, as well 
as those which deal with mills and fairs and harvests — 
show his concern with the middle and lower classes, which he 
describes in good realistic prose. His sketches have little variety 
or invention in plot, but they exhibit well the decadence of 
manners toward the end of Louis XIV's reign; actual figures 
and events of the time lend some interest to Dancourt's second- 
rate art. His best play is the Chevalier a la mode (1687) ; it 
deals with the scrapes of an unprincipled gallant who mingles 
audaciously two kinds of " affairs " — financial and amorous. 

The greatest writer of this transition period is Lesage, 2 
whose Turcaret really equals Moliere's creations. It was pre- 
ceded (1707) by Crispin rival de son maitre, which 
esage combines a good plot with a new presentation of the 

perennial valet of comedy. Crispin, instead of supporting his 
master, rivals him in courtship, less for the sake of the girl 
than for her dowry and his consequent prestige. Lesage also 
wrote a great deal for the Theatre de la Foire, an unliterary 
exercise which at least taught him easy manipulation of intrigue. 

Turcaret (1709) is not, however, primarily a plot-comedy, 

but a serious satire on manners and an original treatment of 

a new and lasting type. This is the traitant, the 
" Turcaret " 

unscrupulous financier of the period, who lives by 

extortion and tries to shine as a spender and a lover. Like 

Tartuffe, this hypocrite is in the end humiliated by various 

revelations. His character and environment are built up by a 

series of firm sure touches, from the excellent exposition through 

the rounded denouement. Turcaret appears as self-important, 

grasping, short-sighted and foolish in his love-making, shrewd 

and cruel in business and family matters. Lesage was offered 

a large bribe to suppress this portrait of a very actual type, 

2 For biographies of Lesage and Marivaux, see following chapter. 



426 COMEDY AND DRAME 

the kind of financier, who, like the Jew of the Middle Ages, 
seems to have been used and scorned in almost equal pro- 
portions. 

The picture of society which Lesage presents is not flattering. 
There is a mixture of classes and ambitions, a feverish desire 
Social f° r l uxur y an d money, and a callous lack of any 

Depiction idealism, particularly in affairs of the heart. There 
is not a single attractive character in the play, because the women 
who fool Turcaret are little better than himself, and the servants, 
as usual, cynically pull the strings. But this masterpiece pro- 
duces no such impression of conventionality as we find in 
Regnard and even in Marivaux. It is a genuine expression of life 
in the domain of high comedy, sustained by a bold realism of 
colorful language, an authentic crisp wit and a definite air of 
modernity. The last quality is probably due to the fact that 
Turcaret is the first of the famous money-plays which later 
figure so notably in dramatic history. Balzac, Augier and 
Dumas fits are the true successors of Lesage in this respect. 

Nericault Destouches (1680-1754), the last of the transi- 
tional group, brought from England a certain gift for portray- 
ing eccentric characters. He stands, indeed, for an 
attempt to resuscitate the comedy of character in 
a serious style; but he also possesses traits which foreshadow T 
the sentimental comedie larmoyante and the moralistic drame. 3 
His characters thus tend to become lay-figures, and his plots, 
though not badly conducted, contain a good deal of false 
romanticism, depending on recognition, virtue in danger, virtue 
rewarded, and so on. The play which marks the advent of the 
drame is Le Philosophe marie (1727) ; but the best comedy of 
Destouches is rather Le Glorieux (1732), where the haughty 
nobleman is brought low through a series of blows to his pride. 
" Mon fils est glorieux," says the forgiving father, " mais il a 
le cceur bon." Intermarriages between classes are again fea- 
tured here, with much moralizing thereupon. 

As the century wears on, the forms of comedy become more 
Kinds of diverse and numerous. To the staple kinds — the 
Comedy comedy of character, of manners and of intrigue — 

are added not only the hybrid comedie larmoyante, but such 

3 See end of the chapter. 



VARIOUS COMEDIES 427 

forms as the satirical comedy of personalities (Voltaire's 
L'Ecossaise) , the philosophe comedy of propaganda (Marivaux' 
L'lle des Esclaves), finally the political comedy of social revolt 
(Beaumarchais' Manage de Figaro). On the fringe of the reg- 
ular drama are to be found marionette plays, coarse burlesques 
and especially light opera, which in the works of Favart grew as 
to importance and influence. As to content, esprit held the first 
place in drama, then came philosophic and social discussion, with 
the note of pathos as a poor third. Several single comedies, of 
individual merit and of illustrative value, may now be mentioned. 

The satirical and personal kind is well illustrated by Palissot's 
Les Philosophes (1760), a group which is directly attacked and 
Various Plays even misrepresented in the play. Sedaine's Philo- 
and Playlets sophe sans le savoir (1765), which some consider a 
drame, seeks rather to combine two ideals of " philosophy " and 
good sense in a pleasant and moderate fashion. The sage here is 
M. Vanderk, a modest and mercantile nobleman who can make 
his points — for instance, that personal worth is superior to rank 
— without sermonizing. The thought is embodied in the action, 
the scenes are climatic, and the characters are true to them- 
selves and to their respective conditions in life. The play is 
indeed a new and true creation, a model of artistic simplicity and 
measure, though on a small scale. Piron's sophomoric La 
Metromanie (1738) appeals to young writers rather than to the 
general public. It is a question of a poet's mania for verse and 
of the misfortunes which befall his sympathetic personality. 
But the play has a fine natural style and the wit which was 
always Piron's gift. Gresset's Le Mechant (1745) is equally 
well written and with a more vigorous touch; it is a genuinely 
Classical comedie de caracteres in art and tradition. The 
" mechant," a type who cannot bear to see other people happy, 
is duly punished in the end. Moliere is Gresset's master, but his 
playlet, like Le Glorieux and Le Joueur, is a delicate rather than 
a deep portrait. 

The comedy of eighteenth-century society, together with the 
century's conception of art, is represented in a new way by Mari- 
vaux, who definitely leaves the tradition of Moliere 
and is nearer Racine in his treatment of love. The fig- 
ures of Marivaux are well matched with the landscapes of Wat- 



428 COMEDY AND DRAME 

teau. Delicate ladies and submissive gallants promenade through 
a " Carte du Tendre," occupying themselves with a subtle form of 
love-making often expressed in precieux language. The servants 
echo the demeanor and the style of their masters. There is some- 
thing thin and unsubstantial about these " spiderweb " comedies, 
as Voltaire called them, in which ghosts of the old regime 
seem to be treading an eternal minuet. Marivaux gives the 
illusion of movement without much moving. His plots are slight, 
consisting of a sort of hurdle race, an accumulation of ob- 
stacles to the course of true love. The chief plays all 
repeat the same theme — " l'eternelle surprise de l'amour " 
— and it is their weakness that the difficulties would dis- 
appear at any moment, if the right word were spoken by 
the right person. ; [ This comedy of cross-purposes is exemplified 
by Le Jeu da Vgmcmr at du hasard (1730), where servants are 
disguised as masters and vice versa ; but each person falls in love 
according to his or her proper rank, and the deferred revelation of 
the true status of each constitutes the only suspense in the plot. 
Le Legs (1736) shows a more plausible strife between the pocket- 
book and the heart; but its action is maintained simply because 
the timid marquis can scarcely believe that the countess loves 
him. A similar situation appears in Les fausses Confidences 
(1737). These three are the best-known plays of Marivaux 
and are still kept in the repertory. They incorporate the tradi- 
tion of the new Theatre-Italien, where most of Marivaux was 
gracefully represented. They are all, in form, conventional prose 
comedies, with Classical balance of characters and interests. 
But they have certain conspicuous merits of their own. 

" Quand l'amour parle," says one character, " il est le maitre; 
et il parlera." He speaks at length, with a good deal of refined 
" marivaudage," containing both singularity and sen- 
Sentiment sibility> which the au thor partly distilled from his 
associations with Fontenelle, Lamotte and the salon of Mme de- 
Tencin. It is nearly always a nascent timid love that Mari- 
vaux portrays. Its language is respectful and gallant, 
and without passion, and with considerable delicacy. 

Distinction The women, like Racine's heroines, are well ana- 
lyzed and differentiated. These Sylvias and Aramintes, as well 
as the lesser coquettes, are possessed of undeniable charm, 



BEAUMARCHAIS 429 

and charm in the long run is the master quality of 
Marivaux. He thereby rises superior to his failings and seems to 
reflect the fragile graces of his century with a peculiar manner 
and distinction. And he is a capable artist within his formal 
range. He really founds the modern drawing-room comedy, as it 
is later carried on in the work of Musset and of Pailleron. 

Pierre Caron de Beaumarchais (1732-1799) was not only the 
most talented dramatist of his age, but he led a life closely 
Life of associated with his brilliant comedies. Like his 

Beaumarchais own Figaro, Beaumarchais was a veritable jack-of- 
all-trades. Of humble birth, he appears in turn as a watch- 
maker, a harpist, a successful candidate for court favor, the hus- 
band of wealthy widows, and always a master of intrigue. He 
was sent on a private mission to Spain. He aided the French 
Government by adventurous plotting in Holland and Austria. 
He furnished arms to the American colonists and found difficulty 
in getting payment. He established a society of dramatic authors 
and published the first complete edition of Voltaire. He was 
famous for his law-suits, which he turned, in his eagerly devoured 
Memoir es, to the confusion of the new courts of justice. Always 
in hot water as regards the authorities and his own finances, he 
was about to find a secure position when the Revolution over- 
threw everything. Unscrupulous, ambitious, energetic, gay and 
kind-hearted, Beaumarchais is one of the most fascinating and 
representative of eighteenth-century celebrities. 

Literature with him, as with his counterpart Sheridan, is 
quite incidental to the adventure of life. But he had a natural 
gift for the drama of action, and his two great plays 
are alive with the personality of their author. These are the 
Barbier de Seville (1775) and the Manage de Figaro (1784). 
The Barbier, which originated from the comic-opera plots of 
its own time, finds today its natural complement in the music 
m Le Barbier °^ Rossini. Its plot and most of its characters are 
de Seville" conventional in outline but are vivified by the dex- 
terity, wit and style of Beaumarchais. It is simply a question 
of conspiracies and disguises, of a jealous guardian, a pretty 
ward, a romantic lover and a helpful barber. The characters, 
however, are cleverly matched, and the scenes — for instance, 
the famous lesson scene — are conducted with dash and daring. 



430 COMEDY AND DRAME 

Beaumarchais' style is original, diversified and witty in the 
extreme. Above all, he created a new and immortal character 
in Figaro, who has been called the " legataire universel of all 
the valets of comedy " — Mascarille, Crispin and the rest. He 
is also, in his unabashed gaiety and his quick resourcefulness, 
the incarnation of Beaumarchais himself. A self-reliant indi- 
vidual, he is already heard murmuring against various social 
abuses. 

This last feature is much more pronounced in the Mariage de 
Figaro, which though written (1778) shortly after the Barbier, 
Le Mariage was l° n S withheld from the stage. It is here that 
de Figaro Beaumarchais turns comedy into " universal satire/' 
into diatribes and insinuations against the lawyers, the courtiers 
and the privileged classes generally, who, says Figaro, are often 
inferior to their servants. The characters in the former play 
reappear, after the passage of time, and the reason for the bar- 
ber's bitter spirit is that the Count, already weary of his wife, 
now wishes to seduce Figaro's fiancee. The main plot concerns 
the outwitting of the libertine by Figaro and* the women; they use 
" double-crossing," double disguises and hiding-places, since 
Beaumarchais could not be content with simplicity. This play 
is highly elaborated and constructed on a very large scale as 
regards the number both of personages and of incidents. For 
example, there is the figure of Cherubin, another new type on 
the stage, a precocious youth who is in love with every woman 
and embroils everything. There is the plaintive Marceline, a 
lady really belonging to the comedie larmoyante. t There is the 
act which takes off the courts of justice, as in Rabelais. There 
is the final garden scene, containing various incognitos and 
coups de theatre, a bewildering accumulation of incidents and 
people. All this is far from the reduced size of the regular 
Classical comedy. In action, the play lives up to its subtitle 
of " la folle journee." In characterization, the rather cynical de- 
velopment of the persons whom we already know is well marked, 
and the new figures are equally living. The language is swift 
and brilliant, even more elliptical, taking more for granted 
than in the Barbier. The Mariage " sounds the tocsin of the 
Revolution," and when one reads Figaro's great monologue in 
the last act, the wonder is that the play could have been repre- 



LA CHAUSSEE 431 

sented at all. For the old order here seems dissolving in im- 
morality, and the new order has insolently announced itself in 
this comedy, which is on the whole the most remarkable dra- 
matic production of the century. It stands at the confluence of 
all genres, great and small, and is a resume of the period, on 
both the dramatic and the political sides. 

The two remaining dramatic forms, of little artistic worth, 
but of considerable historical importance, are the comedie 
larmoyante and its successor the drame bourgeois. The former 
is thus defined by M. Lanson: 

La comedie larmoyante est un genre intermediaire entre la 
comedie et la tragedie, qui introduit les personnages de condition 
privee, vertueux ou tout pres de l'etre, dans une action serieuse, 
grave, parfois pathetique, et qui nous excite a la vertu en nous 
attendrissant sur ses infortunes et en nous faisant applaudir a son 
triomphe. La Chaussee en fut l'inventeur. 

Two plays of La Chaussee may be taken as typical of this 
kind. In La jausse Antipathie (1733), two married people 
who barely knew and heartily disliked each other 
a C aussee ^ £ rg ^ mee t a g am a ft e r a long separation. They 
do not recognize each other until the " voice of nature " speaks. 
They are finally reunited after various obstacles and much 
weeping. The romantic sentimentality of this play pleased 
the women, and the same quality won a much greater success 
for the Prejuge d la mode of 1735. The aristocratic {l prejudice " 
is that a husband must not admit any fondness for his wife. 
La Chaussee's husband is not really indifferent; he simply does 
not wish to seem ridiculous about his wife until jealousy 
conquers his pose. The wife is " vertueuse et sensible " and 
naturally loves her husband. The interest of the play is that 
it reflects a social condition which it helped ameliorate. La 
Chaussee " turned the woman of the world into a mere woman," 
capable of serious love. Among his other plays, of less conse- 
quence, are Melanide and UEcole des meres. His chief imitator, 
curiously enough, was Voltaire, who though he 
officially scorned the genre, admitted the mixture of 
tragic and comic, and tried to affect the public in L' Enfant 
prodigue and Nanine — the latter a sort of Pamela. These 
works are scarcely successful, and what is more extraordinary is 



432 COMEDY AND DRAME 

that Voltaire, in pure comedy, is not successful at all. Too 
much propaganda and egotism impede his portrayal of char- 
acter, and his natural wit seems to benefit him little as a 
dramatist. 

Other characteristics of the comedie larmoyante may be men- 
tioned. Even with private domestic life is mingled a shoddy 
romanticism of mistakes, disguises, recognitions and misfortunes. 

There are practically no villains, since everybody must be vir- 
tuous — hence the need for the above devices. The action is 
slowly and awkwardly conducted. The characters are seldom set 
on their feet, since moral maxims replace analyses of real people. 
The depiction of manners is slight and secondary. The real 
importance of these plays is in their subjects; they show the 
vogue of discussions about morality and virtue; the pleasures 
of sensibility ; the power, in love and life, attributed to sentimental 
goodness ; much talk about " nature " and the famous " voix du 
sang " which causes recognition between long-lost relatives. In 
the drama as a form of art, La Chaussee has scarcely a place; 
but he partly expresses contemporary ideas and he paves the way 
for Diderot's bolder theories. 

Diderot stands for realism on the stage, as in most of his other 
work. 4 His various Entretiens on the drama (1757 f.) make an 
Theories of important addition to criticism. His chief prin- 
Diderot ciples are: (1) that Classical tragedy is dead and 

should be replaced by an intermediate form, serious in tone; (2) 
that subjects should be drawn from everyday bourgeois life; (3) 
that this life is best represented as a matter of social status or 
" condition " ; (4) that prose is better than poetry for domestic 
drama; (5) that pantomime, tableaux and other aids to action 
should be freely used. The last three points represent some 
advance on La Chaussee. The result will be the drame bourgeois 
in its various gradations and with its various nomenclature 
(comedie serieuse, etc.). The importance of this theory is that 
it came fully into its own through the work of nineteenth-century 
Realists. 

But the drame bourgeois itself, whether handled by Diderot 
or Beaumarchais, whether due to the English influence (transla- 
tions of Edward Moore and of Lillo) or changing under the in- 

« See Bk. IV, Ch. III. 



THE SOCIAL DRAMA 433 

fluence of Revolutionary propaganda, is of little artistic signifi- 
cance. As a social and historical fact, however, since several 
The Drame hundred of these drames were produced, the form 
Bourgeois has its importance: it shows the growth of bourgeois 
class-consciousness and it becomes a vehicle for philosophes and 
reformers. Fresh feelings and ideas are there, but they are 
poorly expressed. Sensibility, morality, and pseudo-romantic 
intrigue still dominate and thwart artistic composition. Per- 
sistent twaddle, feeble action, deficient observation and charac- 
terization deprive the drame bourgeois of the necessary dramatic 
elements. 



CHAPTER III 
FICTION: LESAGE, MARIVAUX, PREVOST , x 

It has been said 2 that the whole history of fiction shows the 
evolution from the impossible, through the improbable and the 
Progress in probable, to the inevitable. If this be true, the 
this Period transition in France from the improbable to the 
probable is nearly connected with the transition from the seven- 
teenth to the eighteenth century. The former age barely laid 
the foundation for the modern " psychological " novel and the 
novel of manners; the latter saw a very considerable develop- 
ment in these and other kinds. The seventeenth century had 
rather frowned upon fiction as a light feminine genre not prac- 
ticed by the ancients ; in the eighteenth, we first find professional 
novelists of repute, and most of the important writers produced 
fiction of one sort or another. 

The first great writer of the realistic roman de mceurs was 
Alain-Rene Lesage (1668-1747), the author of Gil Bias. Lesage 
bridges the two epochs, passing his formative years 
, esage and producing his early masterpieces under Louis 

XIV. His Breton birth and rearing have been held responsible 
for the vein of sturdy independence which marks his character. 
He stands on his own as a man of letters, seeking no patronage 
from the aristocracy, whom he freely criticizes. Educated in a 
Jesuit college at Vannes, he acquired there a wide knowledge of 
the ancients, whose cause he espoused in the Quarrel. Like so 
many others he came to Paris to study law, a profession which 
he soon abandoned for literature. It is worth noting that he 
married a girl of Spanish descent. He led a modest bourgeois 
life, not mingling in society nor seeking admission to the Acad- 
emy ; but he came in contact with actors, authors and apparently 

1 On seventeenth-century fiction, see Part II, Bk. Ill, Ch. I and Bk. IV, Ch I; 
on other eighteenth-century novels, see Part III, Bk. II, Ch. II (Voltaire), Bk.IV, 
Ch. Ill and Bk. V, Ch. I (Diderot, Rousseau); for the plays of Lesage and 
Marivaux, see preceding chapter. 

2 By Professor Brander Matthews. 

434 



LESAGE'S NOVELS 435 

financiers, and his most pungent satire is directed against these 
classes. He cut something of a figure in the cafes, where free 
discussion was allowed. In his old age he retired to Boulogne, 
where he died. 

The best works of Lesage are surrounded by a mass of hack- 
writing. He translated Spanish novels before writing his own, 
and even after Gil Bias he wrote three inferior romances, largely 
imitated from the Spanish. Thus it is no wonder that Spanish 
originals have been found for Le Diable Boiteux (1707) and for 
a part of Gil Bias. The former story uses the framework of 
Guevara's El Diablo cojuelo: in each book the devil obliges the 
hero by unroofing houses and by displaying the lives of the in- 
mates. But the roofs removed by Lesage are Mansard roofs, his 
, t Le Di a bi e revelations are essentially Parisian, and this consti- 
Boiteux" tutes the main interest of the story. People were 
already getting a taste for actuality through the drama, through 
Dufresny (who anticipates the Lettres persanes) and particu- 
larly through the increasing editions of La Bruyere's Caracteres. 
So the contemporary portraits and events, the scarcely veiled 
scandals and anecdotes of Le Diable Boiteux, as well as its crisp 
style and wit, immediately ranked Lesage as a successful author. 

The same characteristics, as well as a similar looseness of 
composition, appear in Gil Bias, which is a far greater book. 
It is in fact a world-book, through the weight of 
its influence and the variety of its readers, and" 
it has found even more favor abroad than in France. To illus- 
trate, the history of the English novel, from Fielding to Dickens, 
could hardly be written without some reference to Gil Bias. 
Its own origins are clear: it is in the tradition of the Spanish 
picaresque romance or rogue-novel; it is also a road-novel, in 
that it often narrates perambulations and adventures in the 
open; and it underlies the modern novel of manners, using 
a Spanish veil to describe and satirize French people and con- 
ditions. The work was issued in three sections at widely 
separated dates (Parts I and II, in 1715; III, in 1724; IV, in 
1735), and thus covers the social history of a whole epoch — 
the decay of Louis XIV, the Regency, and the ministry of 
Fleury. The first two parts deal more with private life, the 
last two with political matters and the world at large. 



436 FICTION: LESAGE, MARIVAUX, PREVOST 

The " question de Gil Bias" concerns the extent of its in- 
debtedness to Spanish sources. Briefly, one-fifth of the book 
Sources and especially in its first part, is freely imitated from 
Composition the Vida del Escudero Marcos de Obregon by 
Vicente Espinel. There are also borrowings from other 
picaresque novels and still other sources. These partial 
plagiarisms do not seriously impair the original force and 
attractiveness of Lesage's treatment. A more serious blot is 
his lax method of composition. Using the autobiographical 
form, then almost universal, he narrates the life and adven- 
tures of his hero, and since this is a road-novel he permits a 
" good deal of wandering about " in the plot. The author is 
little concerned with dramatic sequence: events are but loosely 
strung together by characters who happen to stroll in again, and 
too much use is made of chance and coincidence. There are two 
conclusions, very similar in circumstances and effect, at the 
ends of Parts III and IV respectively. Moreover, Lesage insists 
on introducing unrelated episodes and inset stories to an extent 
which reminds one of the Arabian Nights, recently (1708 f.) 
translated into French. Let us relate, suggests the captain in 
the robbers' cave, " par quel enchainement d'aventures nous 
avons embrasse notre profession." Thus the reader is off on 
the trail of Sinbad and easily loses the thread of the main 
story. 

But it may be urged that the story is not the thing with 
Lesage. He announces his intention to give a succession of 
Portraits and portraits, a picture of true manners, and to 
Characters moralize therefrom. These three things he faith- 
fully carries out. The picture is vast and varied. French so- 
ciety, bearing Spanish names, appears in all degrees. Many pro- 
fessions and " humours " are displayed in the portraits of great 
ladies and ministers of state, of rogues and adventuresses, of 
doctors, financiers, comedians and authors. Against the last 
four types the satire of Lesage is particularly directed. The 
" keys " indicate that Voltaire and Crebillon fils, Mme de Lam- 
bert and the actor Baron appear in suitable disguises. As a 
rule the author portrays low and middle-class life rather than 
the aristocracy; and rather than ideal or elevated characters 
he sets forth the " average sensual man." Such is the char- 



LESAGE'S REALISM 437 

acter of the unheroic hero himself. For Gil Bias is essentially 
an adaptable person, a chameleon who changes with his setting. 
Like the hero of Manon Lescaut, he begins his exploits at the 
age of seventeen, when moral instability is most excusable. He 
falls in with and reflects many milieux — from that of robbers 
and lackeys, bohemians and comedians, up to church and 
court circles. He adopts the vices and devices peculiar to each 
set, but it has been observed that he is gradually formed by the 
world and ends as a cautious steward of property. Among the 
other salient personages are such rascals as Don Rafael; the 
vain Archbishop of Granada; Laure, the pretty and piquante 
adventuress; and the immortal Doctor Sangrado, who bleeds 
and purges people to death. 

If the adventures are unusual — and adventures mostly are — 
the chief characters are probable and life-like, and the same is 
true of their environment. Lesage's realism anti- 
Realism cipates the modern kind in that he makes much of 
external things. " II voit et il fait voir." Local color appears 
picturesquely in the use of Spanish w T ords and customs, and 
Lesage's descriptions generally are picturesque. Furthermore, 
he seeks the characteristic detail of each person, gives his 
appropriate physiognomy, gestures and costume. Gil Bias com- 
placently dons and describes his fine clothes. Money is fre- 
quently handled and in specific sums. People are seen walking, 
dressing, traveling and eating; they eat almost as much and as 
circumstantially as in Dickens; the motto of Lesage, says one 
critic, might be: " Je mange, done je suis." There is little 
description of nature, but interiors, such as the robbers' cave 
or employers' houses, are given with moderate detail. Cata- 
logues of concrete things are sometimes used, as well as other 
realistic devices. 

Lesage's style is realistic in its simplicity and naturalness. 
He expresses himself easily, sometimes negligently, in every- 
day language. Though he was an " Ancient " and strews his 
book with classical allusions, as well as with abstract moral 
maxims, he is more like Voltaire in his short sentences, his 
light ironic touch and his general vivacity, especially in dia- 
logue. Wit he has at command, not in excess, and he condemns 
the precieia. His survey of human weaknesses is abundantly 



438 FICTION: LESAGE, MARIVAUX, PREVOST 

satirical, but seldom bitter and always clean. Like Moliere, 
he has only the average and practical morality of experience. 
He lacks sentiment, elevation, enthusiasm, which qualities 
hardly belong to the realistic manner. Lesage is one of the 
most French of French authors, and Gil Bias, thoroughly es- 
tablished as a world classic, remains a most attractive and read- 
able book. 

Pierre de Marivaux (1688-1763), as may be judged from his 
graceful plays, shone as one of the chief lights of the salons. 

His scintillating wit and preciosity were welcomed 
Marivaux foy Mme de Lambert and Mme de Tencin> His 

character was amiable, and in spite of serious financial reverses, 
he had a reputation for charity. He was successful first through 
his comedies, particularly at the Theatre-Italien, less so at the 
Frangais, where cabals were formed against him. He also had 
difficulties with Voltaire and the philosophic party. He be- 
longed to the school of the Moderns, while Fontenelle was among 
his best friends. 

His two important novels are the Vie de Marianne (1731-41) 
and he Paysan parvenu (1735-36). They are both unfinished, 
autobiographical in form, and, like Gil Bias, they 
is ic ion re j a ^ e foe rise in fortune of the main character. 
Marivaux also represents the novel of manners, but he sticks 
more closely than Lesage to average folk and to every-day 
happenings rather than adventures. He uses episodes freely 
and cares little for the action, which he impedes by abundant 
analyses, moralizings and subtleties. Thus to the roman de 
moeurs he adds features of the modern " psychological " novel. 
His picture of life is intensive rather than extensive. He lacks 
the broad grasp of Lesage. 

Marianne, at fifty, chatters freely to a friend about her 
early life — how she was left an orphan in Paris, pursued by 
an old hypocrite and loved by a young lord, whom she manages 
finally to marry. This thin substance is filled out by inter- 
esting feminine revelations. Marianne frankly confesses and 
stages her wiles, coquetries and vanities. Retro- 
" Mananne " spectively, she appears as an " honest " girl, though 
candidly reckoning on her beauty and vivacity to improve her 
fortunes. She displays her charms, hand and foot, and her lover, 



MARIVAUX'S NOVELS 439 

hand and foot, is bound to her chariot. She is a creature of ad- 
dress and finesse, but her conversational style is allowed to in- 
clude certain subtleties of which Marivaux was more capable than 
Marianne. The author's main purpose is to study characters and 
passions, which he analyses both in their motives and consequences. 

The counterpart to this work is Le Paysan parvenu. Here 
the arriviste is a handsome footman, who rises through the good 
" Le Paysan © races of ladies. Marriage is only one stage in his 
parvenu" ^career, which is attended by some very shady trans- 
actions ; these are supposed to be offset by courage and generosity, 
as well as by an occasional scrupulousness. But this Jacob, as 
a person, is less acceptable than Marianne ; and the novel, in spite 
of showing more action and alertness, is an inferior composition. 
Marivaux, like Richardson, was at his best when sympathetically 
penetrating feminine psychology. There he could distinguish 
and differentiate; accordingly, the two bourgeoises who fall in 
love with Jacob are among his cleverest successes. It has been 
said that Marianne herself personifies an epoch, typifying the 
reign of woman in society. 

Marivaux's fiction has a good deal, though rather less than 
his drama, of the highly mannered style, to which the term 
Marivaux's " niarivaudage " has been applied. This term may 
Qualities now be defined as a subtle preciosity of language 
and thought, the latter usually necessitating the former. But 
even where he has the choice, Marivaux prefers the deliberately 
elaborate to any simple expression. Wit and conceits and a 
" systematic refinement " of vocabulary make him the embodi- 
ment of the new precieux spirit for which the salons were respon- 
sible. Also he insists on drawing the last drop out of his analyses 
and putting down what everybody might have thought and 
said — a habit which makes him the Henry James of his day. 
The precieux effect is particularly visible in the love-making 
of his plays, which was in accordance with the tradition. With 
an over-abundance of subtlety and wit, he must be granted a 
scintillating quality, an amiable irony and a gentle gaiety which 
help to relieve the strain. But " marivaudage " is best read in 
small doses. Merely as language, his style, if recherche and 
highly distilled, is elegant, pure and apparently facile. His 
prose is everywhere most characteristic of eighteenth-century 



MO FICTION: LESAGE, MARIVAUX, PREVOST 

refinement. As a moralist, he shows a " sensibility " which Le- 
sage has not, and a deeper understanding of what then passed 
as " virtue," as well as of the kind of gallantry that flourished in 
the hot-house atmosphere to which he was accustomed. But 
he has by no means the creative power of Lesage or of Prevost 
at his best. 

Like Lesage, the Abbe Prevost (1697-1763) was a hardworking 
man of letters, honorably making his way by the varied products 
of his pen. His youth was stormy and irregular. 
Destined early for the church, he escaped into the 
army for a time, probably experienced a deep love-affair, then 
for seven years sought rest and sanctuary in the order of the 
Benedictines. Wearying of their strictness, he again escaped, 
this time to England ; there he found his true vocation as a novel- 
ist and started his journal Le Pour et Contre (see Bk. II, Ch. IV) . 
After more adventures in Holland, he finally (1734) settled in 
Paris, where he regularized his position with the church and be- 
came an unattached abbe. Modest, laborious, endowed with a 
lively sensibility, he won his place in Parisian society, being 
respected by Voltaire and received by Mme de Tencin. 

Before coming to his fiction, a word should be said about 
Prevost's miscellaneous writings. He helped the English 
Miscellaneous V0 S ue n °t only by his journal, but by his excellent 
Works translations of Richardson's novels. These were 

much admired by the French and started the new currents of 
sentiment which culminate in Rousseau. Prevost goes farther 
afield in the compilation called the Histoire generate des voy- 
ages. Here eighteenth- century exoticism is well displayed as 
a liking for remote scenes and primitive social conditions. Some- 
thing of the same trend, combined with a distinct taste for ad- 
venture, appears in Prevost 's long romances. 

The romances have lived chiefly by their names: Les Memoires 
oVun homme de qualite, Le Doyen de Killerine, Cleveland. They 
jr. seem now, in spite of some enthusiasts, hopelessly 

Secondary old-fashioned, long-winded and " highly improb- 
Romances able." It is the kind of improbability that especially 
hurts a novel, because it takes away from the effect of life and 
adds the effect of ridicule. The plots are full of wild events: 
murders, shipwrecks, dark deeds, sudden plunges and changes 



PREVOST'S MASTERPIECE 441 

of fortune. The composition is inferior and the psychology 
quite cloudy; but the romances have their importance as re- 
flecting one taste of the times and as forming the matrix in which 
is embedded the gem, Marion Lescaut. Many characteristics of 
the latter appear in Prevost's other works: the " dark coloring " 
of perpetual tragedy, the great place given to passion and feeling, 
the autobiographical method, the exotic wanderings and par- 
ticularly that romantic sense of fatality, of the mystery in life 
which the philosophes wholly lacked. " Les philosophes savaient 
tout sauf le je ne sais quoi " — and Prevost knew that. 

Manon Lescaut is, in several respects, the masterpiece of the 
eighteenth century in fiction and is the first great modern novel 
"Manon °^ passion. It is among the most artistically com- 

Lescaut" posed, the most harmonized and unified of French 
novels, comparable in this respect to Flaubert's Madame 
Bovary. It first appeared (1731) as a sort of appendix to the 
Memoires d'un homme de gualite, but the usual elements of 
Prevost's fiction are here compounded according to a very dif- 
ferent recipe. In the first place, Manon is quite short, written 
concisely and without episodes. In the second place, the action 
is not mere melodrama, but is dominated by the thoroughly 
conceived, the living and appealing characters of hero and 
heroine. Finally, the constant note of pathos is inherent in the 
story, and the treatment of the heart-interest is superb and 
inevitable. These varied excellences are probably due to the 
fact that Prevost himself had lived through a similar experience. 

The story, though widely known, may be briefly set forth. 
The Chevalier des Grieux, a youth of seventeen, falls in love 
11 at first sight " with the adorable Manon. The lovers escape to 
Paris and for a few weeks live together in ideal bliss. But 
Manon, though she is fond of the Chevalier, is still fonder of 
luxury. To keep their establishment going, she yields to the 
advances of an old nobleman, who causes Des Grieux to be re- 
covered and taken home by his father. The agony of the young 
lover presently yields to a resigned despair, whereupon he in- 
differently accepts a theological career. In the course of time, he 
appears at a public ceremony at Saint-Sulpice. Manon is among 
the audience and seeks an interview. " Perfide Manon! Per- 
fide ! " cries the young man, who is only too soon persuaded that 



442 FICTION: LESAGE, MARIVAUX, PREVOST 

her perfidy is skin-deep and that she really cared for him all the 
time. Again they elude their elders and find a cottage in the 
suburbs of Paris. Expenses accumulate, and under the tuition 
of Lescaut, Manon's rascally brother, Des Grieux becomes a 
card-sharper. In contrast to this character is Tiberge, the 
faithful friend to whom Des Grieux often has recourse. Through 
theft and fire, misfortunes overtake the lovers — and Manon 
is again ready to deceive the Chevalier with the old nobleman, 
her first " protector." But it seems better after all that the 
lovers and Lescaut should deceive and rob the old roue. He 
pursues them and has them shut up in different prisons, from 
which, employing the usual romantic devices, they presently 
escape. For a brief time they are again together and happy. 
Manon even discourages the suit of an Italian prince, but when 
the son of her first protector makes advances, she once more 
bids Des Grieux farewell. This would be the third betrayal, 
but now the Chevalier takes the upper hand and in a tre- 
mendous scene reproaches and persuades Manon to leave the 
young nobleman. They attempt to deceive this youth, dally too 
long, and are once more arrested. Des Grieux is finally re- 
leased, but Manon is sent as a convict to America. There her 
lover accompanies her, both of them in great distress and 
poverty, and there at last he wins her whole heart for himself. 
But complications arise, the lovers must flee from New Orleans, 
and the story closes with their flight into the wilds, Manon's 
death, and her burial by her devoted and distracted Chevalier. 
It is apparent from the above that Prevost has purposely 
contrasted Des Grieux, who is ever faithful, with Manon, who 
becomes so only at the end of the story. This " rehabilitation " 
is due less to the inflaming power of love than to the Chevalier's 
long devotion and to the shared sorrows in which even Manon has 
lost her taste for joys. Thus the plot unfolds a tragic accumu- 
lation of events, through which rides, even more tragically, the 
dominant master passion. The chief characters, with all their 
weaknesses — they are so very young — are exceedingly sym- 
pathetic. Manon says little and is scarcely described. But her 
living figure is placed among the Helens and the Guineveres of 
immortal legend. Absorbing as the book is in its endless pathos 
and strong in its delineation of love, the tone is Classically re- 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE NOVEL 443 

strained, and uncontrollable passion is still viewed as a frailty 
rather than a virtue. 

Thus the novel as a genre grew decidedly in favor and power 
during the eighteenth century. It assumed various forms, con- 
forming to changing circles and periods, rather 
than entering on a straightforward development. 
Realistic with Lesage, realistic and analytical with Marivaux, 
it becomes almost romantic in the sweet intensity of Prevost's 
masterpiece. Elsewhere, we shall see the latter strain continued 
and individualized in Rousseau's Nouvelle Heloise. In the 
meantime, such philosophes as Voltaire had been using the short 
story for their own purposes. Finally, the scattered and form- 
less fiction of Diderot expresses mainly the exuberant naturalism 
of his temperament. Propaganda, passion and reality, the 
eighteenth century had known them all, and the nineteenth will 
prolong and partially straighten out the twisted skein. 



CHAPTER IV 

POETRY 

For the most part the eighteenth century does not shine m 

poetry, whether lyric or narrative. Voltaire can be credited 

with art and talent, and Chenier with a genuine 

Two Features Muge i. but apait from thege we find throughout the 

century only third-rate writers. The chief interest in studying 
them is to observe how their artificial and graceful verse (vers 
de societe) reflects the manners of the time ; and how the English 
influence and the growth of the elegie led in the second half of 
the century toward some depiction of nature and emotion. But 
even in these attempts, mere elegance is the rule, lack of color 
and inspiration leaves us cold, and not until Chenier do we find 
any great poetry. 

It is in light verse that the age is at its poetic best, and 
Voltaire is the main representative of this kind. We have 
seen that, reacting against Lamotte and Fon- 
tenelle, Voltaire at least endeavored to put the 
writing of verse on an honorable and artistic plane. 
Lamotte's views about poetry were peculiar and bold; 
he simply tried to rationalize it into prose. His Dis~ 
cours and prefaces show an ingenious and critical mind, which 
happens to be wrong in most of its decisions. Rationalism and a 
factual standpoint characterize his combative attitude during the 
last phase of the Quarrel (1714-16). A modern of the Moderns, 
Lamotte rejects authority, despises Homer, and declares that 
reason alone is the judge of " truth." So the " true " language of 
poetry is prose: rime and rhythm are unessential, the thought- 
content is the real issue, though some vivacity in images and 
style is not out of place. Consistent with his paradoxes, Lamotte 
held that all verse of his contemporaries — and of Racine as 
well — would lose nothing by being turned into prose. He was 

1 For Voltaire, see above, Bk. II, Ch. II. 
444 



MINOR POETRY 445 

right as to the majority of his contemporaries, but wrong as to 
Racine. And his attempts to bear out his theories resulted in 
a translation of the Iliad, which is certainly prosaic enough, 

Lamotte did not win his main contention, but his and Fonte- 
nelle's objections to the " coarseness " of Homer and Theocritus 
are significant of the trend of the times. None of 
ig erse ^ m j nor p 0e t s ^ \y e mentioned had any vital con- 
tact with nature or with antiquity. " Genius was rare and 
affectation common." It was a highly mannered age, and artifi- 
cial gallantry and veneer stamp its verse as well as its fashions. 
The grand gout and the controlled emotion of the seventeenth 
century are lacking, while a dwindling neo-classicism is even 
more conspicuous here than in tragedy. Mythological allusions 
appear with a wholly conventional effect, the language is colorless 
and much reduced in range, enthusiasm and passion are dis- 
countenanced. On the other hand, there is an abundance of 
esprit, of irony and piquancy coming suddenly to the fore — trick- 
ling, for example, through the verse which Voltaire and Bertin 
mingled with their correspondence and condensed in the epigrams 
of Piron — 

Ci-git Piron, qui ne fut rien, 

Pas meme Academicien. 

The epigram was, in fact, the one form to which the century 
could do justice, and its hard glitter, its diamond-like brilliance, 
are well represented by Piron, Voltaire and Lebrun. Much 
clever satire is found in verse as well as in prose. But satire alone 
will not support lyrical flights, of which there were very few. There 
was too little inner life and too much social form. Conventional 
epistles and odes, faded graces and facile rimes for albums are 
found in this boudoir poetry, which amiably pretends to wander 
among imaginary islands and temples, and presents ancient fig- 
ures making modern love. 

The elegy, for instance, is not a poem of grief but of gallant 
love, inspired mainly by Ovid and Tibullus. The note of epi- 
curean libertinism appears very early, with Chaulieu, who be- 
longed to the Societe du Temple and encouraged the young Vol- 
taire. The Epitres and the Baisers of Dorat continue this sen- 
sualism with a sort of frivolous effervescence. These masters of 



446 POETRY 

gallantry — La Fare, Dorat, Gentil Bernard — show no idealism 
or faithfulness in their love-affairs. They frankly declare for 
inconstancy, on either side, as lending an added piquancy to 
amorous adventures. They mingle wit with their sensuality, as 
the later elegists try to mingle sentiment. Leonard and Colar- 
deau give rimed versions of the Temple de Guide, that youthful 
extravagance of Montesquieu. Gresset, who had a graceful talent, 
writes a mock-epic on a parrot {Vert-Vert). The 
xamp es vindictive Lebrun shows some power and boldness 
in his would-be Pindaric odes. There are also the pretty fables 
of Florian, almost the last fabulist, and the odes and hymns of 
Lefranc de Pompignan, that solemn bore, whom Voltaire un- 
mercifully derided. A swarm of poetasters compose mythologi- 
cal tableaux or amorous trifles and describe their excursions to 
the country. 

This last kind of subject has its interest, because it presently 
becomes associated with the so-called " genre descriptif," which 
Thomson and a i me ^ at depicting country life. The English influ- 
Nature ence largely caused this change of base. 2 Thomson's 

Seasons were first translated in 1759 and were later freely adap- 
ted by Saint-Lambert, who induced a considerable vogue in the 
depiction of nature. Other Saisons followed, a series of Mois 
by Roucher, a poem on Les Jardins by Delille, who also wrote 
certain " Georgics " which put him in the front rank of wits. 
None of these men had any real nature-sense, such as was to 
be found in England. Saint-Lambert writes amateurishly of the 
country, as regards either its beauties or its labors, and keeps 
his eye on Paris most of the time. Roucher shows more personal 
feeling, and Delille, relatively speaking, had the best descriptive 
power and charm. But as a rule these writers are superficial 
and quite neo-classical in their verbiage, since it was still 
indecent to call a spade a spade, and since rhetoric was still 
more esteemed than truth. The importance of the movement 
is that it did to some extent combine with Rousseauism to for- 
ward the later Romantic interest in external nature. 

Another popular English writer was Young, whose Night 
Thoughts (translated 1769) promoted a certain taste for the 
pleasures of melancholy; while Macpherson's Ossian (tr. 1776 f.) 

2 See above, Bk. I, Ch. III. 



WRITERS OF ELEGY U7 

began to awaken a sympathy for ancient laments and misty land- 
scapes. It is rather startling to find the old regime, in its last 
Yo and days, addicted to meditations on solitude, death and 
Melancholy tombs. This tendency should not be over-empha- 
sized, but several poets undoubtedly express a rather poignant 
and meditative melancholy. In this they pave the way 
for Lamartine, while in their unfortunate lives and early deaths 
they offer parallels with Chatterton. Gilbert, who killed himself 
at thirty-two, is the best case of the poet-martyr. He had a 
somber enthusiasm, a kind of genius, a strong proud troubled 
soul. He was a/ rebel, inveighing against the tastes and abuses of 
the age. His talent was not wholly formed, showing awkward- 
ness in the midst of real power. The verses written just before 
his suicide — 

Au banquet de la vie, infortune convive — 

have been called the finest lyric of the century before Chenier. 
Malfilatre, who also died young and unformed, had lyric feeling 
and aimed for true poetic beauties. He shows grace in the ele- 
giac manner and some descriptive force in his Narcisse dans 
Vile de Venus. Finally, the unfortunate De Bonnard and Leo- 
nard sound at times the melancholy note in idyll and elegy. 

The elegy, indeed, which ran through most of the century, 
found its culmination and made its greatest impression in the 
work of Parny. It seems significant that the three 
men who figured best in poetry on the eve of the 
Revolution were all of exotic birth — Parny and Bertin being 
natives of the Ile-de-Bourbon and Chenier of Constantinople. 
Evariste Parny (1753-1814) brought from his Creole birth and 
breeding a considerable capacity for feeling and expressing pas- 
sion. He was of lively but sensuous character, leading with his 
friend Bertin a gay military and social life, studded with various 
intrigues. The artistic results of these appear in the Poesies 
erotiques of 1778, of which the best are " elegies " in form. In 
spite of his exotic birth, Parny had little feeling for nature and 
a frankly material view of love. But though a voluptuary he 
showed at any rate a certain freshness and eloquence in his ama- 
tory verses. He is neo-classical, without Chenier's great sense 
of pagan beauty ; but he has facility and an apparent sincerity, 



448 POETRY 

and when abandoned by his mistress he writes with an almost 
passionate despair. Parny is the most harmonious of poets be- 
tween Racine and Lamartine. He suggested certain moods and 
measures to the latter poet, but the Creole's Eleonore is far from 
foreshadowing the Elvire of Lamartine, so greatly does Roman- 
tic and idealistic love differ from the eighteenth- century vari- 
ety. Eleonore is desired simply for herself or rather for the 
satisfaction she can give her lover; she has no spiritual aura, 
she is associated neither with religion nor with nature. Parny's 
best verses are these, Sur la Mort d'une Jeune Fills: 

Son age echappait a l'enfance. 

Riante comme rinnocence, 

Elle avait les traits de 1' Amour. 

Quelques mois, quelques jours encore, 

Dans ce cceur pur et sans detour 

Le sentiment allait eclore. 

Mais le ciel avait au trepas 

Condamne ses jeunes appas. 

Au ciel elle a rendu sa vie, 

Et doucement s'est endormie, 

Sans murmurer contre ses lois. 

Ainsi le sourire s'efface; 

Ainsi meurt sans laisser de trace, 

Le chant d'un oiseau dans les bois. 

The short life of Bertin was spent mostly in the company 
of Parny, whom he also followed in imitating ancient elegists. 
His Amours are more elaborate, less natural, and more artis- 
tically arranged than Parny's experiences. Sainte-Beuve says 
with truth that Parny was original and Bertin a 
talented imitator. But the latter surpasses his friend 
in depicting both sweethearts and scenery more clearly, giving 
some fascinating descriptions of the Ile-de-Bourbon, which 
Parny had neglected. His art is rich and resourceful for his 
time, but now seems rather too deliberate. Bertin has beon called 
less of a lover than Parny and less of a poet than Chenier. 

Andre Chenier (1762-94), the only great poet of his century, 
was born of a Greek mother at Constantinople. His brother, 
Marie-Joseph, 3 was well-known as a dramatist (see Bk. Ill, 

3 Author of the Chant du Depart; the other great hymn of the Revolution, La 
Marseillaise (1792), is usually attributed to Rouget de l'lsle. 




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CHENIER 449 

Ch. I) and went further in his Revolutionary sympathies than 
did Andre. The latter knew Greek from his cradle, and his fruit- 
Andre ful studies made of him a S enuine representative of 
Chenier the antique. As a boy he lived in Languedoc and then 
tried garrison life, for which he had no taste. About 1783 we 
find him in Paris, where he knew the sculptor David and others 
interested in the revival of antiquity. Chenier lived in London 
for a time, was unhappy there, undertook various travels and 
finally settled in Paris in 1790. His talent was now fully ma- 
tured, but his career was soon to be cut short. Enthusiastic 
at the " dawn " of the Revolution, he later revolted against the 
excesses of the Jacobins, attacked Robespierre and was con- 
demned to the guillotine. Before losing his head, he is said to 
have remarked: " Pourtant j'avais quelque chose la." The 
" something " was a fresh inspiration for poetry. 

Chenier belongs to the stream of truly Classical French poets, 
which extends from Ronsard through Racine, down to Leconte 
His de Lisle. He is not, however, a neo-classicist, but 

Classicism goes directly to the Greek. His early work 
is thoroughly saturated with the spirit of antiquity, as regards 
both thought and form; he forges for himself a Grecian soul 
and apprehends nature and humanity from the ancient stand- 
point. As he matures, modern thoughts and feelings take hold 
of him and it is chiefly the form that remains Classical. This 
ideal is crystallized in Chenier's formula: 

Sur des pensers nouveaux faisons des vers antiques. 

But always the grave and sober beauty of his verses stamp 
them like an ancient medallion, and in his interpretation of the 
Grecian spirit he is of the brotherhood of Keats. 

Only a few of Chenier's verses were published during his 
lifetime, the first collected edition not appearing until 1819. 
Poetry: Also much of his work remains in fragmentary 

Four Kinds form. What we have may be divided into four sec- 
tions: the purely antique; the modern antique, including ele- 
gies; the political; and the philosophical. The first class, simple 
eclogues and idylls, would be represented by such poems as 
La Jeune Tarentine and Le Malade. The elegies, especially 
those to " Fanny," have a more modern passion and charm. 



450 POETRY 

The political poems, consisting of strong invective and satire, 
are found in certain Iambes and in the well-known verses on the 
Jeu de Paume, which give the early program of the Revolution. 
The philosophic poetry was to represent the " pensers nouveaux," 
particularly modern history, science and discoveries. But death 
intervened, and we have only L' Invention and the incomplete 
Hermes. The latter, which is reminiscent of Lucretius, has been 
called the most promising effort toward a great philosophical 
poem in French. But most readers will prefer the finished pro- 
ductions, the idylls which exhibit best Chenier's harmonious 
beauty and his subdued feeling. These qualities may be illus- 
trated from La Jeune Tarentine: 

Elle a vecu,*Myrto, la jeune Tarentine! 
Un vaisseau la portait aux bords de Camarine: 
La, l'hymen, les chansons, les flutes, lentement 
Devaient la reconduire au seuil de son amant. 
Une clef vigilante a, pour cette journee, 
Dans le cedre enferme sa robe d'hymenee, 
Et Tor dont au festin ses bras seraient pares, 
JLt pour ses blonds cheveux les parfums prepares. 
Mais, seule sur la proue, invoquant les etoiles, 
Le vent impetueux qui soufflait dans ses voiles 
L'enveloppe: etonnee et loin des matelots, 
Elle crie, elle tombe, elle est au sein des flots. . 



BOOK IV 
THE WAR OF LIBERATION 

CHAPTER I 

THE ENCYCLOPEDISTS AND THE LATER 
PHILOSOPHES 

If the first half of the century collected much material for the 
battle of free thought, the second half actually fought the battle. 
Therefore " philosophy " becomes more decidedly 
Encyclopedie "polemic after 1750. This is apparent both in the 
(1752-1772) changed tactics of Voltaire (see next chapter) and in 
the massed formation of the Encyclopedia. The latter has been 
called the true " center for the history of ideas " during this 
period. Its two chief tendencies were toward science and lib- 
eralism ; it was an arsenal of positive knowledge and a rallying- 
point for skeptical criticism and reform. Appearing at the 
crucial moment, when all the old loyalties were decidedly shaken, 
it was from the beginning viewed suspiciously by those in power. 
To forward its insinuative propaganda, it assembled various 
writers of note, and it ranks as the first great modern Encyclo- 
pedia. 

Denis Diderot (see Ch. Ill, below) was its chief editor. About 
1748 a bookseller had proposed to Diderot that Chambers' Eng- 
lish Cyclopedia be made the basis of a much larger 
1 ory French work. The permission and cooperation of 
dAguesseau were secured. With the support of Mme de Pompa- 
dour and in spite of the opposition of the orthodox, seven volumes 
had appeared by 1757. Then there were various storms, led by 
the Parliament, abetted by Jansenists and Jesuits, and partly 
clustering around Dalembert's iconoclastic article on " Geneve." 
Publication was suspended, Voltaire weakened in his adherence, 
and Dalembert withdrew altogether. But Diderot, with the 

451 



452 ENCYCLOPEDISTS AND LATER PHILOSOPHES 

connivance of the government, carried on the task alone and 
finished in 1765 the main body of the Encyclopedia, which con- 
sisted of seventeen volumes. Later eleven volumes of illustra- 
tions were published, and still later a Supplement. 

The title-page of the Encyclopedic declares that it was under- 
taken by "une societe de gens de lettres." The contributors 
Chief represented every variety of occupation and taste. 

Contributors Diderot and Dalembert were, as Voltaire said, the 
Atlas and the Hercules who carried the weight of this world. Di- 
derot's efforts were immense and untiring. Not only was he 
main editor, but he wrote about five (octavo) volumes as a 
contributor. These articles are on the most diverse subjects 
and are not numbered among the best of his writings. Dalem- 
bert, the natural son of Mme de Tencin and the great friend 
of Mile de Lespinasse, was a geometer by profession, rather more 
of a precisian and less genial than Diderot. But the two agreed 
in their main tenets: skepticism as to theology, curiosity con- 
cerning knowledge, and propagation of the scientific faith. Da- 
lembert was more cautious than Diderot and served as a useful 
medium of communication with Voltaire and the Academicians. 
His main contributions were along mathematical lines, and he 
also wrote the celebrated Discours preliminaries to which we 
shall return. The Chevalier de Jaucourt, the " jackal of the 
Encyclopedia," was an indefatigable editor as regards hack- 
work and also wrote many articles. Voltaire added the luster 
of his name, wrote several literary articles — for example, " Es- 
prit " — but became less enthusiastic after the crisis of 1757. 
The chief critic was Marmontel, bel esprit and society man, who 
had a great reputation in his time, partly from his adroitness in 
pleasing all parties. His contributions, which are informative 
and appreciative of novelties, have been mostly collected in his 
Elements de litter ature (1787). Rousseau was used for music; 
Montesquieu was much quoted on political matters, and his unre- 
markable Essai sur le gout appeared here; Turgot was repre- 
sented by five excellent articles and also tried to put into prac- 
tical effect some features of the Encyclopedists, social program. 
Incidental use was made of Buffon, Duclos and many minor 
specialists, such as the grammarian Du Marsais, the scientist 
Formey, and such abbes as Morellet and Mallet for theological 



MERITS OF THE ENCYCLOPEDIA 453 

matters. The majority of the contributors, however, were of 
mediocre caliber. 

Certain facts about the Encyclopedia are well stated by Mor- 
ley. Both Diderot and Dalembert proceeded from Bacon's 
General classification of knowledge, thus giving a positive 

Features coherence to the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, 

which was largely based on Locke's philosophy of sensation. 
Also the writers constituted a fraternal group, and the work made 
a popular impression of " universality, of collective and organic 
doctrine." The attack against the church is conducted cautiously; 
the writers still use the theological " veil " (in the manner of 
Bayle and Voltaire) and speak as believers. The fact is that the 
Encyclopedia stood less against religion than for science, espe- 
cially in its applications to human life. That is why even the 
court could become interested in the article on " Powder," and 
according to the anecdote, Louis XV " could not understand why 
they spoke so ill of this book." The wide popularity and influ- 
ence of the Encyclopedia are unquestioned. Objective interests 
tended more and more to possess the mind of man, as mystery 
and theology were relegated to the background. Morley con- 
cludes that " energetic faith in possibilities of social progress has 
been first reached through the philosophy of sensation and ex- 
perience," of which, after Voltaire, the Encyclopedists were the 
widest distributors. 

These features can be best exhibited by considering in detail 
the Discours preliminaire and then by discussing the principles 
The " Discours ^ * ne Encyclopedie as operative in half-a-dozen fields 
Preliminaire "of human effort. There are two parts to Dalembert's 
(1751) Discours: a logical distribution followed by an actual 

history of knowledge. His first step is to examine the " genea- 
logy " and then the filiation of the sciences and arts. Adopting 
Locke's sensationalism, he gives a rather fanciful picture of the 
order in which (primitive) mankind arrived at its perceptions. 
We hear much of the physical and mathematical sciences, to 
which the later, more humanistic sciences are made relative or 
subordinate. In fact, Dalembert urges the principle of relativity, 
especially as regards the interdependence of knowledge {rapports) , 
and he believes that all knowledge, including that of the fine arts, 
is utilitarian at bottom. " Tout s'y rapporte a nos besoins." 



454 ENCYCLOPEDISTS AND LATER PHILOSOPHES 

With apologies to Bacon, he then draws up his genealogical tree 
on an a priori basis. There is a three-fold division of knowledge 
according to our faculties: memory produces history; reason, 
philosophy ; and imagination, the fine arts. The subdivisions are 
according to the degree of spirit and matter in the various fields ; 
so, for instance, history may be subdivided into spiritual (sacred 
and church), human (civil and literary), and natural history. 
The three main divisions may also be applied to people, who will 
then be " erudits, philosophes and beaux esprits." Foreseeing 
the objections to this systematizing, Dalembert hastens to add 
that it will not wholly work out in practice ; and the stress in the 
Encyclopedia itself is less on systems than on facts and things. 

Passing to the historical sketch of the growth of knowledge, 
Dalembert also admits that this will not follow the logical 
Historical a priori scheme outlined for primitive man. He 
Divisions gives a " gradation " showing the progress of the 
human mind, mainly revealed in its geniuses, from the Renais- 
sance down. His main thesis is thus asserted: " On a commence 
par l'erudition, continue par les belles lettres et fini par la philoso- 
phie." Applied chiefly to modern France, from the sixteenth 
through the eighteenth centuries, this view has met with general 
acceptance (by Voltaire, Brunetiere, and others) . Dalembert is 
typically philosophe in his contempt for the " barbarous " Middle 
Ages and in his belief that the erudite Renaissance imitation of 
the ancients was so much loss for the " advancement of reason." 
He briefly expresses appreciation of the great writers and artists 
under Louis XIV and then passes to what really interests him, 
the birth of modern experimental philosophy. Here Bacon, by 
his method of inquiry, was the immortal founder — though Bacon 
was scarcely known in France until the Encyclopedists allowed 
him credit. Locke and Newton gave tangible form to philos- 
ophy, which has since invaded literature, not wholly, as Dalem- 
bert sees, to the benefit of the latter. He concludes that this 
process towards a liberalizing philosophy has been a necessary 
evolution. He agrees with Locke as to the limited extent of our 
knowledge, and he holds that mathematics offers a higher degree 
of certitude than any other field. 

The Discours remains an imposing vestibule to the Encyclo- 
pedia, and it represents extremely well the philosophic attitude 



ITS FAULTS 455 

of the century. Dalembert's geometrical nature impels him to- 
wards a cautious balance in thought, as well as a poor and dry 
appreciation of literature proper. His " arbre encyclopedique," 
in spite of the fact that it proceeded from Bacon and was finally 
. . adopted by Comte, is open to objection. To classify 

of the sciences according to our often confused sensations 

Discourse j s i ess satisfactory than to classify them according to 
their own fields and materials. The latter is real, the former is 
somewhat arbitrary and anthropomorphic ; it was still the tendency 
of the century — witness Buffon — to relate everything to man. 
Again, in his devotion to utilitarian knowledge, Dalembert does 
not see man as poetizing and hence, contrary to Bacon, represents 
imagination, rather improbably, as the last-born of the faculties. 
He steadily advocates the treatment of the thing-in-itself, 
the fact; and often he is able to combine this with a natural and 
perhaps laudable tendency towards viewing the universe as one 
great fact; " la nature entiere unifiee par la raison humaine " 
is the supreme object of all savants and thinkers. 

Diderot's Prospectus stresses scientific specialism, Progress, 
the chain of knowledge. He declares that the articles in the En- 
Faults of the c } TC l°P ec ^ a wn, l k e linked by definitions, by manner 
Encyclopedia of treatment and cross-references. He emphasizes 
the industrial and mechanical arts ; he has visited the workshops 
and acquired much technical information as well as the planches 
or illustrations, which were certainly a notable feature of the 
Encyclopedia. It will serve, he hopes, as a true library, for con- 
sultation rather than reading. All this gives a fair idea, though 
a somewhat flattering one, of the work itself. The Encyclopedia 
is by no means exempt from faults. The " tree " of knowledge, 
which is supposed to help, often hinders the reader by the arti- 
ficiality of the scheme and its confusions. It serves best when 
not too closely followed. Also the writing is at times poor and 
hasty, veritable hack-work; it is often "faked" bodily, copied 
from various sources of information. Finally, a declamatory 
tone, a fondness for abstractions and a theoretical primitivism 
sometimes hurt the sense of the real world which was, on the 
whole, the chief merit of the Encyclopedists. Diderot's own 
material is illustrative of these diverse tendencies ; it is confused 
in its standpoints, rambling and without proportion. He copies 



456 ENCYCLOPEDISTS AND LATER PHILOSOPHES 

and plagiarizes shamelessly. The work as a whole is badly com- 
posed, sometimes incoherent and chaotic. There are many grave 
errors and contradictions. Simply as scientific matter, not much 
of the Encyclopedia survives today; but that very fact speaks 
in favor of the scientific spirit, of the actual advancement of 
learning for which these writers strove. They would have been 
quite content that their edifice should crumble into ruins on 
which the masons of the future could rebuild. 

The chief currents of the Encyclopedia flowed in these five 
directions: Science, social questions, politics, religion, literature. 
Science, whether pure or applied, was the main pre- 
occupation of the contributors. They wished to sum- 
marize and popularize useful knowledge. The natural sciences 
are more to the fore than the humanistic, which were considered 
derivative. Metaphysics and psychology — the latter term was 
not yet invented — are poorly treated. But practical subjects, 
physics and physiology, agriculture, industry and political econ- 
omy, are dwelt upon at length. Physiology, for instance, is viewed 
as most important; the doctrine of relativity is applied to the 
modifications of man through climate and travel. The physics 
of Newton are used as a basis for the whole work, and the English 
school generally, coupled with the skeptical method of Bayle 
and Voltaire, is responsible for the essentially scientific spirit 
of the Encyclopedists; this is manifest in the search for 
natural and secondary causes, the use of reason and experi- 
ment, the subjection of nature to human ends, the insistence 
on the solidarity of knowledge and on social progress through 
Enlightenment. 

As regards social investigation and reform, the ideal of the 
Encyclopedia is practical beneficence. Hence the conception of 
Social " art " as l ar § e ly industry, the respect demanded for 

Reform artisans, also Diderot's visits to the ateliers and his 

zeal for the planches. Hence the attention paid to the land; 
the full and clear treatment of agriculture; the exposure of old 
abuses and privileges, such as the corvees, the salt-tax, the 
hunting reservations ; and Turgot's articles on " Fondations " 
and " Foires." The Encyclopedists demand both material and 
moral reforms; but they are timid in their insinuations against 
social and political institutions, and they have a vague and 



SPECIAL TOPICS 457 

" rudimentary social science." But Quesnay, at least, here lays 
the foundation of the political economy which was later de- 
veloped by him and other " Physiocrats." In criminal legisla- 
tion, the principles of Montesquieu are followed and urged. The 
aim is not so much punishment of the criminal as prevention 
of like crimes and the attainment of the " greatest good " 
socially. This latter principle really obtained in France before 
it took root in England and is associated with the general 
humaneness of the Encyclopedists, seen in their opposition to 
torture and war. 

The Encyclopedia devotes some space to political science, and 
again Montesquieu is the chief source for what concerns the 
mechanism of government. But in politics proper 
these writers, like Voltaire, are far from revolu- 
tionary. The social reforms mentioned above are simply 
" recommended " to the powers. The Encyclopedists cleave to 
the monarchy, to the philosophe idea of a beneficent and " en- 
lightened " king. They demand certain liberties for commerce 
and industry, also civil liberty, that is, equality before the law. 
It is mainly in their attitude towards the nobility that they 
anticipate the Revolution. They insist that privileges should 
be abated and that the noblesse should either serve worthily 
or yield their position. 

The hand of the censor, civil or religious, still weighed heavily 
at the time of the Encyclopedie. Its writers were officially 
orthodox and hence apparently insincere. One of 
their main purposes was to " sabrer la theologie," 
which could be attacked only w T ith elaborate precautions. Their 
method, then, is indirect and much like that of Bayle. They 
apparently defend Catholic orthodoxy by granting the truth of 
all dogmas, of revelation, of sacred history and of miracles. 
These things belong to the domain of faith (compare Pascal, 
Bossuet, Voltaire) and not to that of reason. Hence the un- 
reasonableness of dogma is already insinuated. Also the Ency- 
clopedists indulge in violent praise of extreme dogmas, such as 
that of eternal damnation, thus " refuting by excess of admira- 
tion." These specious defenses of religion are little better than 
falsehoods, especially when displayed in Jesuitical articles, full 
of faith and unction. In the manner of Voltaire and Montes- 



458 ENCYCLOPEDISTS AND LATER PHILOSOPHES 

quieu, the Encyclopedists use foreign creeds to suggest compara- 
tive criticism; in the manner of Bayle, they thrust skeptical 
arguments into out-of-the-way places and renvois; they quote 
the feeblest of orthodox proofs, and list, through " impartiality," 
the various objections to Catholicism. These fall under two 
main heads, as regards the real purpose of these skeptics: an 
opposition to miracles and various dogmas as contrary to im- 
mutable nature; an opposition to intolerance and persecution, 
as contrary to the principles of humanity. The best and the 
sincerest writing of the Encyclopedists is found in the! latter con- 
nection. 

Their literary criticism, though not first-class, is very sympto- 
matic. Here the chief names are Diderot (though his literary 
articles are neither numerous nor excellent), de 
iterature j auc0 urt, Voltaire, Mallet, Sulzer, a learned Ger- 
man, and especially Marmontel. The minds of these men are 
more open to novelties than might be expected. As regards the 
ancients, they are opposed to close or superstitious imitation. 
As regards aesthetics, they partly follow the beau ideal of the 
previous century, though with expansion through the use of more 
modern rapports and material (Diderot and Marmontel). In 
discussing genius and taste, they favor some emancipation from 
the rules and they demand a larger role for imagination and 
sensibility; they promote an interest in foreign languages and 
literatures; on the whole, however, they chiefly urge the claims 
of a useful and moralizing art. In criticizing contemporary 
poetry, they protest against its lack of sensibility and its insig- 
nificant subject-matter. But they accept the confusion between 
poetry and painting, as well as the century's views concerning 
pastoral and didactic verse. In the drama, the Encyclopedists, 
led by Marmontel, are clearly modern, supporting the reforms 
of Voltaire and of Diderot. The drame bourgeois is accepted 
in its main features — the use of prose, of contemporary average 
characters, the rejection of neo-classical artificialities. Gener- 
ally, more movement is recommended, together with the reform 
of stage-setting and of declamation. The Encyclopedists are 
partly progressive, because they recognize the decline in belles 
lettres as due to the decay of the old genres and the rise of 
philosophy. They accept the literature of knowledge but wish 



BUFFON 459 

at the same time to stimulate the artistic side of literature by the 
introduction of more spirit and of fresh forms. 

The " conquests " of the Encyclopedia, according to its latest 
historian (Ducros) , may be summed up along the three lines of 
Three Main " na ture, reason, humanity." These principles 
Principles obtain in the conflict with the church, in the con- 
structive endeavor to forward the arts and industries, in the 
approach to science and in the general effort to benefit humanity 
and knowledge. A reasoned humanitarianism is perhaps the 
greatest contribution of the Encyclopedists. 

The connection of Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon 
(1707-88), with the Encyclopedia was incidental and rather 
hostile; but his own monumental work is in itself 
a scientific encyclopedia, with literary aspects, and 
it may well be considered at this point. Buffon spent much of 
his life on his country estate in Burgundy; he also traveled 
abroad and formed relations with English and other scientists; 
from 1739 to his death he was the director of the Jardin des 
Plantes (Jardin du Roi) , which he made the most valuable col- 
lection in Europe. In all of its phases, his life was given over 
to scientific observation and investigation, although his interest 
in natural history did not develop until his maturity. His 
career was laborious and highly honored, his character elevated, 
his mind a happy blend of the experimenter's zeal and the 
generalized ability. 

His Histoire naturelle (1749-88) appeared as an official pub- 
lication based upon the royal collection, owing something to 
collaborators and much to correspondents. It con- 
18 or s sisted of thirty-one volumes, dealing with the earth, 
man, animals and minerals. The vegetable kingdom was not 
treated, nor were certain of the smaller animals. Seven supple- 
mentary volumes (from 1774) contained the famous Epoques de 
la nature. The Histoire naturelle established the fortune and 
prestige of its chief author and had a wide popularity, five edi- 
tions being published in Buffon's lifetime. The excellence of 
the treatment causes the work to rank as another great monu- 
ment of literary Expansionism. Buffon added to the field of 
letters a complete natural history of birds and quadrupeds, as 
well as a fascinating cosmogony in his Theorie de la terre and Les 



460 ENCYCLOPEDISTS AND LATER PHILOSOPHES 

Epoques. He thus provided lasting foundations for zoology 
and materials for comparative anatomy; and he drafted that 
union of paleontology and cosmogony which made the fame of 
Cuvier. Parts of Buffon's scientific edifice have fallen, but his 
successors (Cuvier, Lamarck, Geoffroy de Sainte-Hilaire) have 
built from the debris. The literary features of this vast under- 
taking consist first in the author's general ideas and then in 
his style. 

His view of the animal kingdom is hampered by anthro- 
pomorphism (" Buffon ramene tout a l'homme ") and also by a 
certain indifference to classifications, as regards genus; he es- 
tablishes the species by the test of self-reproduction and he 
upholds, on the whole, the immutability of species, though not 
of " varieties." Thus he both fostered and opposed the doctrine 
of biological evolution. The major part of the Histoire con- 
sists of monographs, dealing separately with each animal or 
substance, to which are added descriptions of experiments and 
more general discours. The monographs are mainly historical 
and descriptive; beginning with domestic animals, Buff on indi- 
vidualizes the species by the principle of generation and colors 
the picture by emphasizing human resemblances and moral 
traits (such as " nobility ") ; this kind of thing is less valuable 
than the more distinctive characteristics or habits which Buffon 
established for each bird or beast. Most valuable are the 
generalizing passages, and these appear at their height in the 
Theorie de la terre and the later Epoques de la nature. Buffon 
is not concerned with the origin of matter or of life. But con- 
tinuing the work of various predecessors, especially Leibnitz, 
he was the first to give a history of the successive stages of the 
globe. Underlying this are two main theories, scientifically 
based: that the earth was originally covered with water; and 
that its interior was composed of fire or molten material. The 
" Seven Epochs " are then marked by incandescence, cooling off, 
the deluge, drying off, the great animals, the separation of con- 
tinents, the appearance of man. The reconstruction of these 
epochs, the impressive vistas disclosed, the entrance of the great 
mammals and of man on the pre-historic scene, have remained 
a part of our cosmic vision. 

It is in the broad sweep of such passages, rather than in the 



THE IDEOLOGUES 461 

decorative tributes to the lion and the horse, that Buffon's 
style (le style noble) attains its full power. He had on this 
subject convictions which are found in his Academic Discours sur 
le style (1753). The best expression, he held, proceeds from 
cumulative action, from the forward march of facts 
His Style an( j ^eas; therefore an orderly plan of one's knowl- 
edge (cf. Horace) is an understructure essential for good writing. 
One should aim at warmth rather than wit, and " truth " in 
style is to be found when it conforms with the subject and with 
the writer. Hence the celebrated dictum: " Le style c'est 
l'homme meme " — that is, it takes on the coloring of his mind. 
Finally, Buffon knew that " Ies ouvrages bien ecrits seront les 
seuls qui passeront a la posterite." His own writings have sur- 
vived no less for his originative thought than for their excellent 
presentation, which is vivid in description, pointed and clear 
in diction, and majestic in panoramic effect. 

A few of the later thinkers, who belong rather to the history 
of philosophy than to that of literature, may be mentioned. 
The Condillac is best known for his Traite des sensa- 

ideoiogues tions (1754), which is fathered by Locke but gives 
no independent place to reflection. For Condillac derives 
immediately from the sensations all our experience and 
thought. He typifies the growth of consciousness by the alle- 
gory of a statue endued successively with the various senses and 
thus awakening into life. The followers of Condillac at the 
turn of the century — Destutt de Tracy, Volney, Garat, La- 
place — were known as " les Ideologues." An earlier writer, 
C. Helvetius [De V esprit h 1758), also derives all powers of the 
mind from the senses. The extreme phase of this movement, 
ending in a materialistic atheism, is found in the Systeme de la 
nature (1770) and other works by the Baron d'Holbach, who 
was a considerable figure, both intellectually and socially, in 
his time. This " gray and ghost-like book," in which the Deity 
is viewed as an oppressor, was repulsive even to Voltaire. It 
was more in line with the ideas of Diderot, an intimate of d'Hol- 
bach 's circle, and it exemplifies one logical extreme of the 
philosophe movement. A more optimistic extreme, the highest 
loop attained by the theory of Progress, is represented in the 
theme of the " indefinite perfectibility " of man. This is best 



462 ENCYCLOPEDISTS AND LATER PHILOSOPHES 

expressed by the Marquis de Condorcet, in his Esquisse d'un 
Tableau historique des Progres de V esprit humain (1794). It 
took both courage and conviction for a victim of the Terror, 
on the verge of suicide, to declare an immutable faith in the 
possibilities of human progress. 



CHAPTER II 

VOLTAIRE AT FERNEY: 
POLEMICS AND PHILOSOPHY 

We left Voltaire established at Ferney near Geneva. It was on 
this estate that he passed the fifth and most important phase of 
Th his career. His activities became more and more 

Patriarch of varied, his fame was resounding and his influence 
Ferney enormous. Ferney was practically a seigniorial 

domain, and Voltaire willingly plays the seigneur. He promotes 
agriculture and manufactures, he exempts his subjects from 
oppressive taxes, he stands firmly for social justice, and he even 
erects a church. The domain of Ferney still shows many 
traces of Voltaire's occupancy, and it must have delighted 
him to maintain and exhibit the beautiful chateau and grounds. 
He entertained on a vast scale, for he had now a princely fortune. 
Ferney was a great resort for literary pilgrims, such as Abbots- 
ford became later. Private theatricals, aided brilliantly by Le 
Kain and Mile Clairon, are again a main resource, despite the 
objections of Rousseau and other Genevans. But the real im- 
portance of this period is that Voltaire's skeptical philosophy 
becomes militant, and all his entertaining, his correspondence 
and literary activity are directed to one end: to fight the intoler- 
ance and superstitions of the Church, to ecraser Vinjame. This 
watchword, repeated throughout his correspondence, became the 
war-cry of the Encyclopedic and philosophic army which King 
Voltaire directed from his stronghold on the border. 

The leader was still in condition to order his hosts. Aging, 
sickly and emaciated, he complains a great deal of his ailments. 
Generous But ^ ne y hardly hamper the power of his mind, 
Activities while his productiveness is unabated. It is as an old 
man, a" patriarch "of seventy or eighty, that Voltaire becomes the 
intellectual leader of Europe. His acerbity of temper increases; 
he quarrels with Rousseau and with Haller the naturalist; he 

463 



464 VOLTAIRE AT FERNEY 

cannot let Montesquieu and Crebillon rest in their graves; he is 
rabid against the crowd of pamphleteers, Freron and Lefranc 
de Pompignan, and he descends to a sort of pamphleteering 
almost on their level. On the other hand, he reaches far and wide 
as the protector of the unjustly persecuted. He clears the name 
and memory of the unfortunate Calas family, wrongly accused of 
murder, and in this connection he writes the celebrated Traite 
sur la tolerance (1763). He awakens civilization to the cruelty 
shown towards young La Barre, who was executed for free-think- 
ing. In the Sirven affair and in that of Lally-Tolendal, to whom 
the dying Voltaire wrote almost his last letter, he is still protest- 
ing against unjust sentences. The majority of these protests are 
aimed at the persecutions of the Church, and the majority 
are successful. More and more Voltaire wins public opinion to 
his side ; he manages now to keep on good terms with sovereigns 
and ministers, and he acquires the friendship and following of 
such men as Diderot, Dalembert, Morellet, Marmontel and La 
Harpe. Certain of these and many others of the philosophic army 
are frequent visitors at Ferney. 

For nearly a generation Voltaire agitated Europe, while stead- 
ily keeping away from Paris. But there too his name had come 
to be honored. A few years before his death a statue 

1S ea was erected to him, while, later, his bust was crowned 
by Mile Clairon. In 1778, the patriarch took his last journey 
to the city, which now rose up to welcome him. He was feted 
like a king at the Academy, at the theater, in public and private 
gatherings. He literally died of his glory, exhausted by his 
honors. That was his first " apotheosis "; his second occurred 
when his ashes were deposited in the Pantheon by the Revo- 
lutionists in 1791. 

In reckoning with Voltaire's long labors as a philosophe, in 
foreshortening his many repetitions and contradictions, it will 
often be necessary to distinguish between the works that preceded 
and those that followed his establishment on the Swiss border. 
One must bear in mind the concentrated and aggressive spirit 
that animated his last phase. The form, too, of his Ferney writ- 
ings indicates their militant character. He keeps up a small fire 
of pamphlets, of personal attacks, special pleadings and flying 
leaflets of all sorts. These are usually anonymous, they are 



THE PHILOSOPHE 465 

unintermittent, they were distributed by thousands, they are 
vehement and frequently scurrilous in style. Their polemic 
doctrine is enforced by the enormous mass of his correspondence, 
running to more than twelve thousand letters, addressed to hun- 
dreds of notables and others, and constituting a vivid private 
history of the times. 

The chief works which may be consulted for an understanding 
of his general ideas are, before 1755: the Lettres philosophiques, 
Chief already characterized; the Traite de Metaphysique, 

Documents which is the most thorough-going presentation of 
his earlier creed ; such poems as the Epitre a Uranie and the Dis- 
covers en vers sur Vhomme, which imitates Pope's Deism ; and the 
Introduction to the Essai svr les moeurs. The transition period, 
more serious or pessimistic, may be placed about 1755 and is rep- 
resented by the Poeme sur le desastre de Lisbonne, by the Poeme 
sur la loi naturelle, and most brilliantly by Candide. Belonging 
to the Ferney period, the important Traite sur la tolerance must 
be emphasized and especially the Dictionnaire philosophique 
portatif. This work, published in numerous editions after 1764, 
became the handbook of revolutionary skepticism, attracting all 
classes by the wit and variety of its encyclopedic articles. Fur- 
ther confessions of faith are the Sermon des cinquante and Le 
philosophe ignorant. Voltaire's versions of theological and 
Biblical matters may be illustrated by Un Chretien contre six 
juifs, the Examen important de Milord Bolingbroke and the 
Bible en fin expliquee. 

The two fountain-heads for Voltaire's " philosophy " are the 
Dictionary of Bayle and the work of the English scientists and 
Sources of Deists. Both Bayle and Locke stimulated Voltaire 
p/liZoso- * n ^ ne ex P ress ion of his great principle of tolerance. 

phie The critical method of Bayle, as we have examined 

it, is transferred freely to the pages of the Dictionnaire philoso- 
phique. Voltaire, though bolder in polemics, borrows from this 
predecessor the skeptical use of the interrogation-point in Biblical 
and historical matters, the rationalization and derogatory treat- 
ment of ancient patriarchs and heroes, the art of malicious in- 
sinuation, the ironic prostration before faith. From English free- 
thinkers and Deists, such as Bolingbroke, Pope, and Shaftesbury, 
Voltaire derives most of his " natural religion." From New- 



466 VOLTAIRE AT FERNEY 

ton and Locke he gets his taste for the physical sciences, thus 
strengthening his own tendency towards the experimental method, 
towards dealing only with demonstrable fact and clear explana- 
tions. Locke, the best and " wisest " of philosophers in Vol- 
taire's view, imposed upon the Frenchman his conception of the 
limitations of knowledge. Voltaire's general Anglomania, quite 
influential in the France of the earlier eighteenth century, be- 
came modified in the course of time, and his zeal for physical 
experiments dwindled together with his zeal for Shakespeare. 
But the profound influence of English thought remained with 
him to the end. 

Le vrai philosophe, according to Voltaire, stands for reason, 
progress, industry and charity; la philosophie, in its widest 
sense, included for him physics and metaphysics, religion and 
ethics, politics and social reform. We shall consider his doc- 
trine according to these divisions. 

His physical experiments had no great value then and can have 

none today. They are simply important as indicative of the 

trend of his mind and of his times — a trend well ex- 

Physics emplified by such useful pieces of popularization as 

his Elements de la philosophie de Newton (1738). 

His views on metaphysics, taking form at the same epoch, 
continue Voltaire's practical and positive bent. It has been 
argued that his persistent dealing with metaphysical 
Metaphysics j n q U } r j es s hows that he understood their importance ; 
but this is contradicted in many passages, both by his directly 
expressed scorn of metaphysics and by the slight aptitude which 
he exhibited for such problems. No better example can be 
found than the Remarques sur Pascal (1734); here we are 
offered the most salient contrast between Pascal, the tormented 
thinker who quivers over the metaphysical " abyss," showing us 
his soul by lightning flashes, and the clear everyday sense — 
which is often lack of deeper sense — displayed by Voltaire. 
This is particularly true of his earlier or optimistic period. 

Indeed, Voltaire's great contention is that metaphysical 
thought leads nowhere. He occasionally admits, though he 
never feels, that it may have a certain value as a mental gym- 
nastic and even as a means to spiritual elevation. But he 
scorns the great philosophers, those " romancers of the soul," 



HIS INCREDULITY 467 

from Plato to Descartes, and he insists that we can never 
know the truth about the chief metaphysical problems. Why 
is this? Because all our knowledge comes from sensation, which 
can inform us only about the practical world of conduct. Vol- 
taire's sensational philosophy, with regard to which he is very 
firm, is based on Locke; and he even goes farther than Locke 
in refusing to put reflection on a par with sensation and in 
allowing us no ultimate knowledge concerning the processes of 
the mind itself. He thoroughly rejects the Cartesian doctrine 
of " innate ideas," as regards any immediate appre- 
Skepticism hension of the Deity? the soulj dutyj trut h. Le 

Philosophe ignorant (1766) is ignorant about the powers of the 
body and the nature of matter, about free-will, about the at- 
tributes of divinity, about the real essence and destiny of man. 

We can best understand Voltaire's views on these subjects by 
bearing in mind that his basic standpoint is practical and social. 
Only those things are valuable and credible which tend towards 
the good of society at large. He objects to any " system " of 
philosophy as unpractical and probably false; and opposite the 
great interrogations he generally writes the verdict " not 
proven." 

Voltaire defends the existence of the Deity, and therefore he 
is ranked as a Deist. His arguments are both Cartesian and 
cosmological. Some God there must be, because my existence 
presupposes the existence of some intelligence beyond mine 
(Descartes) ; and also because the universe demands an archi- 
tect, as a clock demonstrates a clock-maker. These mechanical 
figures are frequent on Voltaire's lips. He also holds by the 
doctrine of final causes, if taken in a common-sense way. The 
only necessary attributes of Deity are omnipotence (within 
reason and nature) and absolute justice. This is a distant or 
" absentee " God, claiming our adoration but not concerned 
with individual human affairs. There is a general, but no 
private Providence, and therefore prayers for intercession are 
useless. The laws of nature are fixed. Morality proceeds less 
from the Deity than from social necessities. If a " dieu 
remunerateur et vengeur " is often mentioned in Voltaire's later 
writings, it is because he appreciates the social force rather than 
the ultimate truth of such sanctions. " II faut une religion 



468 VOLTAIRE AT FERNEY 

pour le peuple." He feels the vastness of Godhead only under 
the stars, and his Theism at its loftiest is a cosmic Pantheism. 

This is a much attenuated Jehovah, and Voltaire's religion — 
for he had one — is an attenuated religion. He called it " la 
religion naturelle," after Pope and other Englishmen. He main- 
tains that though " all religions are false, la religion is true." 
But Voltaire had little religious sense, as that term is usually 
understood. His Theism is stripped bare of the elements com- 
monly constitutive of religions: specific creed, ceremonial, 
mysticism, the supernatural, revelation, and reckoning with a 
future life. The soul may be immortal, but Voltaire scarcely 
holds this belief, admitting it mainly for retributive ends ; further- 
more, he is disposed to associate a possible immortality with the 
duration of matter, and thus he also allows animals their 
share of " la matiere pensante." The problem of the existence 
of evil is, for him, an abyss. In his later writings he inclines 
towards determinism rather than free-will and towards a pes- 
simism, which, however, admits of betterment. It is also true 
that in such writings as Le Philosophe ignorant he shows a 
deeper feeling with relation to the mystery of life and the 
helpless plight of humanity. This feeling involves something 
of a religious attitude. 

Apart from the existence of God, Voltaire acknowledges his 
waverings and uncertainties. Often he is driving less at the 
absolute truth than towards some practical end, to attain which 
he will temporarily admit first one tenet and then another. 
No philosophic belief can be thoroughly grounded in that man- 
ner. Voltaire's real religion, as a whole, is virtually the modern 
Positivism, the service of humanity, and as such it will presently 
be considered. But first we must indicate the negative and 
scornful side of Voltairianism — his attitude towards the Bible 
and the Catholic Church. 

Bayle's Dictionary is the fulcrum, but Voltaire's pen is the 
lever that shook most mightily the rock of St. Peter's. The 
Attacks on Patriarch of Ferney uses any means, and often 
the Church ignoble means, against the church. He exhibits 
the naivetes of the Old Testament, the discrepancies of the New ; 
he attacks the Christian emperors, ridicules the martyrologies, 
and treats church history as a contradictory and extravagant 
record. 



ATTITUDE TOWARD RELIGION 469 

One-fourth of the articles in the Dictionnaire Philosophique 
are directed against Catholicism, and everywhere it is Catholic 
dogma that Voltaire particularly reprehends. Christianity for 
his time meant primarily theology and the priesthood. As 
Morley says, neither Voltaire nor his adversaries argued holi- 
ness or any appeal to the heart of man, nor did either side deal 
with the loftiest and most general ideas of the Christian religion. 
For both, it was a question of ritual, detaik, tithes, sects, Papal 
bulls and the like. Voltaire's point was that on the formal 
side the church had fallen away from Apostolic Christianity. 
The dogmas were added by Church Fathers and Popes to the 
primitive and purer belief. Many of these dogmas, he holds, 
are contrary to reason; they are absurd as well as obscure; they 
are often immoral, in setting up wrong examples — for instance, 
the Biblical Patriarchs. Catholicism is inhuman in its asceti- 
cism, as in its persecutions and superstitions. Of specific dogmas, 
original sin is unjust to God and to humanity; the doctrines of 
divine grace, of penance and pardon through the church, do 
away with personal responsibility; transubstantiation and the 
Trinity are inconceivable or revolting. Any divine revelation of 
truth is improbable. Voltaire is then opposed to all dogmas. 

The second great point of his campaign is that it was directed 
against the supernatural. The miracles that were frauds in his 
own day — visions provoked by flagellations and convulsions, 
and staged by " sorcerer-priests " — were, he believed, equally 
frauds in New Testament times. These manifestations Voltaire 
considers beneath divine and human dignity. Contradicting 
what he has said elsewhere in praise of the person and message 
of Jesus, Voltaire now attacks and rationalizes Christ whenever it 
is a question of miracles, viewing him often either as an im- 
postor or an unenlightened peasant. Voltaire is always declaim- 
ing against what he thought impossible and absurd Biblical 
legends, and it is true that he declaims in a coarse, savage, 
and startling manner. His excuse was that men would not 
cease to be persecutors until they ceased to be credulous. 

The third plank, then, in Voltaire's platform, was his hatred 
of intolerance, issuing directly from his relative point of view. 
As early as Zaire, he contended that our beliefs usually spring 
from our environment, that there are many " tolerable " religions, 



470 VOLTAIRE AT FERNEY 

partial reflections of the truth. Almost indifferently he would 
take up the cause of Mahometan, Huguenot, or Quaker — 
but rarely of Catholic. He argues the universality of common 
beliefs in the best religions and he would discard the more un- 
common tenets of each creed. So his constant aim is to thin 
out the believable portion of Scripture. His religion, lacking 
reverence and stripped of mysticism, comes down to earth and 
consists largely in practical morality. 

His ethics are based simply on the needs of society; goodness 
means the exercise of justice and of a wide charity. It is not a 
question of an inner individual perfection. Vol- 
taire has often been called an epicurean in morals, 
and the pleasure-seeking side of that creed is especially marked 
in his earlier life. He always thought that the search for 
happiness is " our being's end and aim," and as a youth he 
naturally confused happiness and pleasure. But his later 
morality is more nearly that of an altruist and. a social meliorist. 

It is not primarily a Christian morality, it can dispense with 
grace and prayer, and even with divine sanctions. It is rather, 
thinks Voltaire, the morality which lies at the base of all re- 
ligions, of Confucianism, as of Mahometanism. " Les prin- 
cipes de morale communs au genre humain " make the kernel of 
natural religion; but theology, he holds, is characterized by dis- 
union and quarrels. Religions may be immoral, whereas ethical 
principles are clear and serve to unify humanity. In spite of 
local and national divergences which Voltaire maliciously notes 
when it suits his relativism, he claims to believe in one universal 
ethic: its major premise is that all men consider as good those 
things which are useful to society. (But all men do not esteem 
this the summum bonum). Therefore, concludes Voltaire, the 
only necessary attribute of God is justice, which is also the first 
of human virtues; it comes nearer being an inherent idea than 
any other. Its corollary is charity, not as pauperizing alms- 
giving, but almost in the New Testament sense. This virtue is 
equivalent to the term bienveillance, of which Voltaire makes so 
much. He makes very little of the other theological and car- 
dinal virtues, of faith and hope, of force, prudence and temper- 
ance. These are mostly individual matters, and true morality, 
for him, applies only to social man. The great rule is the Golden 



PROGRESSIVE IDEAS 471 

Rule, whether expressed by Christ or by Confucius. A spirit of 
moderation in pleasure, a spirit of service in labor — this seems 
the gist of Voltaire's creed. 

The positive side of Voltairianism, which has been too much 
neglected, concerns the social reforms which this creed de- 
Progress and ma]Q ded. It would be too long to list here all the 
Reform changes required and often enforced by the 

philosophe. He contends for liberty, though a limited and non- 
seditious liberty, of various kinds: free-speech and free-writing, 
the abolition of slavery, civil liberty of the person (habeas 
corpus), civil marriage overbearing the church form, some 
separation of Church and State, with dominance of the latter. 
So many of these reforms have been successfully carried out 
that we hardly realize the part of Voltaire and of the eighteenth 
century in inaugurating them. The same is true of more specific 
recommendations, such as proportional taxation and punish- 
ment, abolition of the octroi, of certain feudal rights and of the 
farming out of taxes; doing away with the venality of offices, 
with Star Chambers and tortures; the fostering of the rights 
of property, of agriculture and commerce. Civil and criminal 
legislation, he held, was conducted on an antique and cruel 
model, which should be thoroughly reshaped and unified. In 
social legislation Voltaire is Progressive; but in politics proper 
he is rather conservative, favoring the ancien regime through 
natural sympathy as well as opportunism. 

His political ideal is an enlightened monarchy, which is perhaps 
nearer to despotism than to liberalism. His ideal monarch is 
le roi philosophe, such as he hoped for in Louis XV 
and Frederick the Great, a ruler so intelligent, able 
and altruistic that he might be allowed almost absolute power. 
He would hate war and conquest as did Voltaire ; he would bend 
all his efforts towards improving living conditions at home and 
promoting culture. This monarch of a dream is a modified Louis 
XIV plus philosophic enlightenment. He should rule as a " be- 
nevolent despot," deciding all matters referring to the establish- 
ment of religions, directing education — which should not be ex- 
tended to the lowest class — controlling priests and all other 
servants. 

Voltaire is not enthusiastic concerning the Rights of Man or 



472 VOLTAIRE AT FERNEY 

republicanism. He is also less of a patriot than a cosmopolitan. 
0n He has no communizing tendencies as regards prop- 

Civilization erty, which is viewed as a sacred right, and he is 
no advocate of equality. His theory of luxury (Le Mondain) 
resembles that of Montesquieu: inequality means circulation of 
wealth and consequently the better condition of the poor. Wealth 
makes civilization, and civilization is, after all, the great object of 
his zeal and care. Voltaire derides Rousseau for his primitivism 
and wants us to conserve, improve and embellish what we have. 
Truly " natural law " is followed by those who civilize humanity, 
carry on the arts, create efficient legislation and make life wiser 
and easier. Rousseauism, he believes, bars progress and enlight- 
enment, because it is anti-human. Voltaire is strongly humani- 
tarian, not socialistic, an intellectual Progressive, not a revolu- 
tionary. He apprehends truth relatively and sometimes evasively. 
His theories of reform are pragmatic, practical, terre-a-terre. His 
religion and morality refuse to leave the earth, they concentrate 
hope by denying its prolongation. In his rather desiccated soul, 
in his adroitness, wit, finish and everyday wisdom, he typifies 
the age which he adorns and which he strove on the whole to 
ameliorate. His influence counted upon the Revolution, while 
the Revolution was still Royalist, and has continued, in dispersed 
and varied forms, throughout the nineteenth century. 



CHAPTER HI 
DIDEROT 

Denis Diderot, known to his contemporaries as " the phi- 
losopher," was the leader and the most original thinker of the En- 
cyclopedic group. He circulated more modern ideas than any 
other man of his generation. A naturalist in his philosophic and 
literary creed, he was able to combine the boldest speculation with 
a close sense of fact and with a warm human sympathy. 

He admitted the mobility of his temperament and styled him- 
self " the weathercock of Langres," at which town he had been 
born (1713). He was educated partly by the 
His Life Jesuits, who seem to have taught him a mixture of 
shrewdness and Latinity. Quite early he showed his taste for 
science and philosophy. Thrown on his own resources,, he led 
for ten years the typical life of the Parisian hack-writer and 
bohemian. An imprudent marriage was followed by some lax- 
ness in subsequent affairs of the heart. Diderot was imprisoned 
as a result of the Lettre sur les aveugles (1749), and then settled 
down for nearly twenty years to his great labor of directing the 
Encyclopedia. * 

After a visit to Catherine of Russia, who pensioned him hand- 
somely, he returned to Paris with broken health, but still w r orked 
industriously until the end (1784). His chief friends and col- 
laborators were Dalembert, Grimm and d'Holbach; also Rous- 
seau, until the unfortunate break in their relations. Diderot was 
never a haunter of the salons, though welcomed by Mme de 
Geoffrin and Mile de Lespinasse. 

By disposition he was expansive, exuberant and endowed with 
The two mucn " sensibility. He was a good friend and father, 
Diderots an ardent lover, as his correspondence with Mile 

Volland reveals, and a great helper of needy writers and others. 

1 See above, Bk. IV, Ch.I; and Bk. Ill, Ch. II, for his connection with the drama. 

473 



474 DIDEROT 

He was prone to enthusiasm, and a friendly literary discussion or 
a new idea would excite him tremendously; his naturally fine 
features would then take on a noble and exalted air, and listeners 
to his incomparable talk would feel that they were indeed in the 
presence of a genius. In conduct he was often the " average sen- 
sual man," democratic, sanguine, with a large dispersive care- 
lessness, " like Nature herself," abounding in effervescent vitality. 
As a lover and observer of humanity, he is constantly appealing 
from artificial to realistic standards. His more familiar writings 
strangely mingle these personal characteristics with those of the 
scientist and the philosopher. His formula was " faire le bien, 
connaitre le vrai." He divided scientific workers into " those who 
have instruments and those who have ideas." Diderot had both 
and employed the combination very originally. His mind was 
like a powerful lens, reflecting both light and heat. But the true 
light is often obscured by sophistry and declamation, his " virtue " 
is scarcely to be distinguished from vice, low and elevated senti- 
ments jostle each other, and there is a Rabelaisian mixture of 
flesh and spirit in his temperament. We find, indeed, a frequent 
opposition between his temperament and his principles: the man 
versus the philosopher. Furthermore, he left two main classes 
of writings, the official and the intimate. The Encyclopedia 
represents the former; of the latter, the majority were published 
at long intervals after his death, and they usually express the 
bolder and more speculative side of his genius. 

It is as a philosophe that Diderot must stand or fall. His 
most vital writing and thinking develop from his practical 
Idea of " philosophy," mobile and confused as this may seem 

Nature to be. But there exists a nebular center to his 

thought, denoted by the frequency with which the word 
" Nature " is on his lips. With Diderot, philosophy could 
properly be termed a " system of nature." The word is often 
used by him in the widest cosmic sense — " the scheme of 
things entire " — with a considerable amount of primitivism 
a la Rousseau. Diderot's knowledge of natural sciences led him 
finally to the full acceptance of a materialistic universe, and his 
evolution towards this standpoint may be observed in his chief 
works. 

His formal philosophizing begins with the Essai sur le merite 



THE PENSEES PHILOSOrHIQUES 475 

et la vertu (1745), freely translated from the English philosopher 
Shaftesbury. Diderot writes here as an orthodox Deist, be- 
lieving in God, revelation, immortality and morality, although 
a " reasonable " foundation for ethics already begins to allure 
him. From Shaftesbury, Diderot drew certain of his more last- 
ing principles, such as the prominence of common sense and the 
conception of aesthetic morals; the two men were also alike in 
their enthusiasm and optimism. 

In the Pensees philosophiques of the following year, the 
author begins his career of free thought; these Pensees are in- 
First tended as an answer to those of Pascal, whom the 

"Pensees" philosophes recognized as their greatest adversary. 
We have here a defense of the passions on a " natural " basis 
and a diatribe against priestly asceticism (cf. La Religieuse) ; 
also objections to miracles and to final causes. Through the 
light of physical experimentation Diderot still sees God as im- 
printed in nature ; the next step is to see nature as her own God, 
hence the famous formula: " Elargissez Dieu." Abandoning 
the temple, the divine spirit now roves through a pantheistic 
universe. The principle of relativity again appears as deriving 
from the multiplicity of religions ; ask the adherent of any creed 
what would be his second choice, and he will answer: " Natural 
religion." Thus dogma and revelation are questioned and 
Deism already inclines towards atheism in Diderot's widening 
thought. 

The Lettre sur les aveugles a Vusage de ceux qui voient (1749) 
is a turning-point in the writer's philosophy as well as in his 
Sensation- career. The two main doctrines of this letter are 
alism relativity and sensationalism. Knowledge is made 

entirely relative to our senses; a blind man disputes the exist- 
ence of God, because the evidence is unseen by him. The 
limitation of philosophic proof to any one sense, however, is 
extravagant, and the Lettre is too individualistic because it 
tends to deny credible testimony based on the senses of others. 
Its interest lies rather in (1) the idea of obtaining psychological 
data from abnormal cases; (2) the fact that the Deity is now 
considered an unnecessary hypothesis; (3) the corollary that 
the world can be self-explanatory, granted eternal movement; 
(4) definite transformism or evolution, in that the world is 



476 DIDEROT 

supposed to evolve, from a primal welter of formless creatures, 
by means of variability and adaptation, towards the survival of 
the fittest. Diderot manifests again his zeal for investigation, 
radically criticizes Deism and advances far towards a completely 
naturalistic conception of the universe. 

This idea appears more distinctly in the Pensees sur Inter- 
pretation de la nature (1754), which is Diderot's chief scientific 
Second testament. Somewhat obscure and fragmentary in 

"Pensees" form, the thought owes much to Bacon, whose 
influence was then dominating the Encyclopedists. The " in- 
terpretation of nature " is in a sense Diderot's life-work, 
and here he emphasizes the ideas of the continuity of knowledge, 
the distrust of metaphysics and the predominance of the nat- 
tural sciences, in the two directions of careful laboratory ac- 
cumulations and the generalizations and intuitions of the 
scientific genius. The world of fact is throughout opposed to 
metaphysics, even mathematics being now viewed as too ab- 
stract. But Diderot passes on through evolution to the phi- 
losophy of the flux, in declaring that known species and the 
present natural sciences are also transitory, and that both man- 
kind and knowledge are forever in the making. In these pas- 
sages and in his concluding prayer, his style rises to a height 
of poetic power. 

The same observation applies to the Entretien with Dalem- 

bert, followed by the remarkable Reve de Dalembert, which 

~. . were too daring to be published in the author's life- 

Dialogues 
of 1769, time. " II n'est pas possible," as Diderot himself 

printed 1830 g^ f these brilliant dialogues, " d'etre plus pro- 
fond et plus fou." For instance, the author maintains to his 
friend that a statue may change into a man by natural grada- 
tions; he hints at a Lucretian — and Nietzschean — Eternal 
Return of phenomena; he deliberately prefers an animalistic 
conception of life. Then Dalembert goes home and has a strange 
dream. His mutterings are recorded as partly spoken, partly 
reported by Mile de Lespinasse to the Doctor Bordeu. These 
interlocutors consider such points as the unification of cell-life, 
figured as a swarm of bees; a new fermentation of being, which 
may result in the superman; the relative nature of our passions 
and capacities, as due to the rapports between the nerve centers 



ETHICAL THEORY 477 

and their extremities; in short a definite, if partly erroneous, 
system of psycho-physics. A bold deterministic amoralism 
concludes this extraordinary document, which is not merely, as 
one critic warns us, " the wild dream of a poet drunk on the 
wine of the new sciences," but shows Diderot's usual method 
of combining what seems giddy speculation — so often pro- 
phetic — with a basis of close observation. 

It will now appear that Diderot, who began as a cautious Deist, 
ended as a frank materialist, of atheistic and even amoral tend- 
encies. As regards his ethical system, indeed, he can 
Morality hardly be said to have had one. Although constantly 
interested in problems of conduct, he had a distinct taste for 
lawless primitivism (Supplement au voyage de Bougainville), 
which left him with little belief in absolute vice or virtue; 
and he shared the besetting sin of the eighteenth-century 
relativists, whose concept of the relative inclined them more 
towards anarchy than towards making the comparatively civil- 
ized at least a cornerstone in progress. But Diderot's practice 
was better than his doctrine; his own nature disposed him to 
make a great virtue of charity {la bienfaisance) , and he thereby 
posits a " natural " penchant towards one's neighbor. For him 
morality is essentially social and individual ethics scarcely 
exist. Revolting from the Church, he believes in the natural 
goodness of humanity, and he shows a certain enthusiasm for 
" virtue " and fine fictions. But since he declares that civiliza- 
tions have on the whole repressed the natural kindly man,' it 
is difficult to see how he would build humanitarian progress on 
any eighteenth-century basis. Personal happiness seems to him 
our main duty, while his various views of social morality are 
surely discordant. His main tendency is more and more to 
consider the moral world as a mere prolongation of the physical. 
That is why it seems paradoxical to hear Diderot as a preacher 
of morality. But if his ethical surrender to nature is anar- 
chistic, he is saved from intellectual Bolshevism by some belief 
in progress and a scientific adherence to the Leibnizian law of 
continuity. In ethics, then, Diderot is critical and destructive, 
whereas the constructive side of him appears rather in the scien- 
tific field, both as regards popularizing knowledge and in fertile 
original generalizations. 



478 DIDEROT 

His philosophy of nature is, in fact, a sort of " superior physics." 
Here he is a phenomenist dealing with actual forms and facts, 
trying to extend the domain of the knowable. In 
his uttermost speculations, he remains concrete, un- 
metaphysical, scarcely leaving the earth. Final causes do not 
interest him; he declares that he is concerned rather with the 
comment than the pourquoi. He believes in the essential unity 
of forces and sees life largely as action and reaction, often auto- 
matic and molecular. But he does not scorn tentative hypotheses, 
nor discount the scientific imagination. This double tendency 
towards facts and speculation reflects his own two-fold tempera- 
ment. There is the Diderot who is a healthy jovial materialist, 
and the Diderot who leaves the temple to promenade through the 
cosmos. 

It has been well said that for this philosopher the famous 
" etat de nature " was really an " etat d'ame." His evolutionary 
Conclusion as ideas were implicit in the Lucretian school and had 
to Philosophy been open i y sus t a ined by Maupertuis; other ad- 
vanced philosophes, such as La Mettrie and d'Holbach, anticipated 
him in complete materialism. But none of them had Diderot's 
genius and crystallizing power, none of them finds such expressive 
delight in the " vertigo of thought," none of them experiences 
such happiness and enthusiasm, such poetic and creative fire from 
communion with the goddess Nature. She lends herself to per- 
petually fresh creations; matter invested with motion not only 
begot the universe, but can forever change it; so all things are 
relative, unstable, and the place of man in this welter is most 
precarious. Diderot has definitely reacted from the Classical 
habit of referring everything to human standards (anthropomor- 
phism) . 

As a critic, Diderot ranks high, first because he everywhere 
recommends realism, and also because of his capacity for en- 
thusiastic appreciation. He brought life into crit- 
icism. If he lacks balance and judgment, he has wide 
views and acute senses; he frequently shows penetration and a 
marked preference for democratic realities. This broad underly- 
ing naturalism is consistent with what we know of the man, the 
philosopher and the dramatic theorist. He distinguishes genius 
from art in that the former is linked with creative enthusiasm, 



HIS CRITICISM 479 

the latter with taste. Poetry " demands something enormous, 
barbaric and savage." Diderot prefers a rude simplicity to his 
own artificial epoch, and it is still the " return to nature " that he 
advocates. But the word keeps its wide inclusiveness, as in- 
stanced in the declamatory Eloge de Richardson, whose characters 
and deeds are praised as " in nature " — that is, in the domain of 
fact and probability ; Richardson's detailed realism is as various 
and convincing as that of the natural world; and his morality 
is of the highest. Here and in the Salons Diderot seems to recur 
to the idea of aesthetic morality ; but his own morality and taste 
are seldom above suspicion. 

His Salons (1759 f.) have been variously judged. Severe 
censors object to their literary flavor, their insistence on the 
As Critic " anecdote," their subordination of technical art- 
of Art criticism, and the introduction of rather spicy pas- 

sages. It is true that Diderot and his age emphasize the idea 
behind the product. He wants a painting to say something, 
in the way of story or history ; at the least, he wants a " speak- 
ing " likeness and insists on expression as opposed to coldness or 
monotony. He practically invented the causerie as an informal 
discussion of art, and this style has had a considerable influence. 
The form is capable of much variety. Diderot will fuse a rather 
vivid description of a picture with the impression, often enthusi- 
astic, which it produces on him, and with any digression that he 
chooses to make. But he introduces as much technical discus- 
sion as, presumably, his audience would stand; especially in the 
three directions of color, line, composition, for all of which he had 
a keen eye. His sympathies are with those painters who observe 
and depict naturally; Chardin and Vernet rather than Boucher. 
His idol is Greuze, who combines naturalness of detail with scenes 
of domesticity, anecdotes and moralizings. In all this Diderot 
runs true to type. He boldly recommends the painter to leave 
the studio and go outdoors where he can get away from the " man- 
nered " poses and the academic taint. He admits that he views 
painting partly as an amateurish connoisseur, partly as a pleasure- 
seeker of sensuous and sumptuous values. But theoretically he 
contends that art must have its morals and that the corruption 
of the one (Boucher) brings on the corruption of the other. He 
defines taste as an " acquired faculty for seizing the true or 



480 DIDEROT 

good," circumstantially depicted. The Salons are written for 
the most part admirably and eloquently, if somewhat hastily. 

The more significant of Diderot's miscellaneous writings can 
be best handled if we view them likewise as prolonged causeries, 
Not a '""' rather than under the more usual heading of fiction. 
Novelist It is difficult to see how Jacques le fataliste, for 

instance, can be considered a novel. Here and elsewhere Dide- 
rot shows little interest in fictional form and he rarely creates a 
character; his tales are all fact or closely founded on fact. He 
is a raconteur, relating the " small memoirs of his century." 
The form in which he excels, then, is dialogue, tending towards 
monologue; he is primarily a conversationalist and an impro- 
viser. This appears in the charming Entretien d'un pere avec 
ses enjants, in various other dialogues, and conspicuously in his 
one indubitable masterpiece, Le Neveu de Rameau (c. 1726). 

Goethe was the first to discover and make famous this amaz- 
ing dialogue, which presents as interlocutors Diderot himself 
„, N (as a philosophe) and the cynical bohemian rela- 

de Rameau," tive of Rameau — who is really another side of Did- 
publ. 1823 ero £ rpj ie debate fchus shows a doubly personal vigor 
and penetration. The philosopher appears as reasonable, cautious, 
charitable, accepting the established order, fond of pleasures, 
but preferring those of the heart, interested in his friends, his 
work, his family. The bohemian is an individualist, display- 
ing his " natural " vices and frank perversities, relishing the 
struggle for life, utterly materialistic, even animal in his de- 
sires and ideas. The two speakers are opposed as regards the 
value of morality, philosophy, genius and education; and each 
gives the best possible presentation of his case. Rameau's 
language is astonishingly vivid, an effect aided by his use of 
pantomime, the detailed account of his gestures, together with 
a style of breathless enumerations. All this is in the best 
realistic manner of Diderot and is done with brilliant precision 
and great speed. The dialogue has " cet air vif, ardent et fou " 
which Diderot claims for his own physiognomy. 

Equally mad, though less interesting, is Jacques le fataliste 

(1773, publ. 1796), which is a frank and free imita- 
His Fiction t . on of gteme in itg wilfd neglect of plot> its sty 

sensuality, and the impertinent intrusions of the author. It is a 






DIDEROT 481 

" Sentimental Journey " which never gets anywhere, and its 
humor is often labored. Diderot himself declares that he is 
not writing a novel and that he is simply telling the truth 
about various episodes. The nominal subject concerns the loves 
of Jacques as he relates them to his rather dull master on the 
king's highway and in hostelries. We have then a kind of 
road-novel, with echoes of Gil Bias and the like; but nothing 
much ever happens. Apart from the variegated pattern, the 
interest lies, as usual, in Diderot's talk, with its occasional wit 
and sprightliness, and in the several short stories interspersed. 
Of these the Histoire de Madame de la Pommeraye et du Mar- 
quis des Arcis has achieved deserved fame. It is a passionate 
tale concerning the vengeance of a deserted mistress who throws 
her quondam lover into the arms of a courtesan; the latter then 
attains virtue through marriage. This romantic rehabilitation, 
as well as the unnaturalness of the revenge, is cleverly criti- 
cized by Jacques and his hostess; but no one can criticize the 
absorbing thrill of the story, especially if read in an abbreviated 
text. 

La Religieuse (1760, publ. 1796) is the best composed, in fact, 
the only novel proper that Diderot wrote. Even this story falls 
The English awa Y towards the end and is unfinished. It is a 
Influence powerful and painful autobiography of a rebellious 
nun in several convents, a conte philosophique through moral 
intention; and Diderot demonstrates his theme as to the horrors 
of conventual life. There are certain gaps in the motivation 
and the characters are rudely sketched, with the exception of the 
heroine, who is a more innocent Diderot. Yet the work is a seri- 
ous social and pathological stu'dy. The style is as usual vigorous, 
sometimes too choppy, detailed in its representation of scenes 
and people. The influence of Richardson probably appears in 
this sort of realism, as well as in the idea of a suffering heroine. 
Diderot's " fiction " frequently shows a sentimental morality 
and bourgeois preoccupations quite in the vein of Richardson. 
In fact, most of the Frenchman's important works, whether 
philosophic or imaginative, reflect some form of the English in- 
fluence, so pervasive at this time. 

Enough has been said to indicate that in the main phases of 
his activity Diderot ranks among the naturalists, and like those 



482 DIDEROT 

of the nineteenth century, he links literary realism with the scien- 
tific approach. He has the eye, the hand, the spirit of the born 
Realism Realist. Whether he is preaching natural philoso- 

and Style phy and religion or demanding concreteness and 
actuality in drama and painting or depicting the real demo- 
cratic world in his own vivid sketches, he is the chief repre- 
sentative of this spirit between Rabelais and Balzac. His 
style and processes are also much like theirs; a manner com- 
pact of color and thought and freshness; a circumstantial 
method of narration, including enumerations and catalogue sen- 
tences; the emphasis on gestures, pantomine, physiognomies; 
the observation, the crude force, the sense of variable life, the 
animalism, the materialistic imagination and memory. Closer 
to Diderot's own age are his taste for " tableaux," the rhetorical 
effusions, and the peculiar habit of mixing licentiousness and 
sentiment. But he is above all individual, thereby repugnant to 
the traditionalists, and his strongest individual quality is un- 
doubtedly verve, the mixture of liveliness, vividness and rapidity 
in a suite of cascading sentences. Scherer says that Diderot 
pours himself out in a facile, turbid stream, sometimes muddy 
and all-carrying as a river at flood-tide, sometimes playfully riot- 
ing over clear rocks at the bottom. At his best he welds perfectly 
form and matter, in a burst of creative energy; but his best is 
contained in picked pages and in no single volume of his works ; 
he is too unequal, too hurried. His sentiment is often rhetorical 
or vulgar, he has force rather than taste, but through sheer 
power and geniality, in spite of anarchy and confusions, he 
manages to lift and impose his materialistic burden. 



BOOK V 
PRE-ROMANTICISM 

CHAPTER I 

ROUSSEAU. BERNARDIN DE SAINT-PIERRE 

Jean -Jacques Rousseau (1712-78), the most remarkable and 
unfortunate genius of the century, was by birth and preference 
a " citizen of Geneva." His Swiss origin helps to 
explain his independence, as well as his more per- 
sistent views on politics and religion and his moralizing vein. 
Thus he reaches and touches France as an alien force, and his 
impact is all the greater. We see him first at the age of seven, 
devouring sentimental fiction with his unstable father. His 
feelings and his imagination were awakened far too early — 
likewise his senses. Good-hearted, but quite uncontrolled as a 
boy, he soon becomes a rascally apprentice and at sixteen leaves 
Geneva in consequence of an escapade. He is taken under the 
wing of Mme de Warens, a charming, free and easy lady, who 
sends him to Turin, where he is converted (temporarily) to 
Catholicism. He becomes a lackey and falls in love with the 
daughter of the house. Again he follows the open road, passing 
through various journeys and adventures. From Paris, at the 
age of twenty-one, he takes his last long tramp and is installed 
at Chambery as the companion of Mme de Warens, under de- 
grading conditions. His partial self-education dates from this 
period, as does, the beginning of his misanthropy. His establish- 
ment at Paris (1741 f.) soon involved him in a lasting liaison 
with Therese Levasseur. She was a kind-hearted but illiterate 
servant-girl who brought down her relatives upon Rousseau's 
head and decidedly hampered his career. She gave him five 
children, whom he turned over to the foundling hospital. Pres- 
ently Jean-Jacques began to please writers and ladies, and in 
1750, his first Discours won the prize of the Dijon Academy. 

483 



' \ 



484 ROUSSEAU 

Professing a moral transformation, he then started to pose as a 
" bear/' refusing to dress the part of a fashionable success. Yet 
he was honored in Paris and acclaimed in Geneva, where he was 
restored to his rights as citizen and Protestant. In 1756 he 
was established at his " Hermitage " in the forest of Mont- 
morency, near Paris. There during the next six years he wrote 
his principal books — La Nouvelle Heloise, Emile, Le Contrat 
social — and became the victim of his infatuation for Mme 
d'Houdetot. Rousseau's suspicions of his friends, especially of 
Grimm, Diderot and Mme d'Epinay, center around this epoch. 
Serious altercations followed. Rousseau left his retreat and 
found other protectors, while his literary reputation was grow- 
ing. Exiled from France on account of Emile, he lived for a 
time at Motiers in Switzerland, where he experienced fresh dis- 
sensions and " persecutions." He finally renounced Geneva and 
Calvinism. In 1766-67 we find him in England, where he quar- 
relled with Hume and again fled onward. From place to place 
he carried his uneasy soul, more sinned against than sinning. 
At last he settled in Paris (1770), and his old age, if still eccen- 
tric, was calmer and kinder. He died in 1778; his ashes were 
carried to the Pantheon in 1791. 

On the face of it, this is not a normal life, and Rousseau 
was evidently an unbalanced person. He has been accused of 
megalomania and of the mania of persecution; 
Character nevertheless, he was entitled to think himself a 
great man, and it now seems clear that there were actual plots 
against his happiness and reputation. He had too rare a nature 
to be readily understood. Where others reasoned, he felt and 
suffered. He was romantic, sensitive, self-centered, intoxicated 
alternately by passion and by " virtue." He was unstable in 
love and friendship, often anti-social in his independence, at 
war with himself and with his Parisian environment. These 
personal traits, as well as the new literary currents which he 
released, will appear best from a consideration of his Confes- 
sions. 

This book ranks as one of the greatest of autobiographies, 
"Les Con- comparable to the writings of St. Augustine and 
publTys'i-ss Montaigne. Lemaitre calls the work the most " can- 
did, singular and passionate " confessions ever written. The 



LES CONFESSIONS 485 

story covers Rousseau's life down to the flight to England, and it 
was composed during the troubled years that followed. Its 
purpose was to defend his character against the libels of the 
Grimm faction, to prove his sincerity and to show the world 
that no better man than Jean-Jacques could be found. Yet he 
frankly admits many grievous faults and stains; he also pleads 
guilty to lapses of memory and certain embellishments in the 
presentation. The first six books are heightened in color and 
retrospect, just as the last six are deliberately darkened. But in 
the main the work does bear the stamp of sincerity, faithfully 
rendering Rousseau's emotions and memories. The vagabond 
charm of the earlier portions, the " portraits " and anecdotes and 
pictures of domestic life, the natural vivid style of these 
morceaux, alternating with the impassioned eloquence of the 
sentimental passages — all of these qualities give the Confes- 
sions their double value as a personal document and as one of 
the first monuments of Romanticism. These values may be 
traced under three headings: individualism, the love of nature, 
and the passionate expression of sentiment. 

Rousseau's own characteristics, detailed with self-complacency, 
often amount to an individualistic doctrine. He appears as 
ardent, weak, vibrating between good and evil, be- 
n ivi ua lsm t ween exaltation and despair. He constantly speaks 
of his sottises, folies, delires, engouements. For a time he would 
be captivated by friend or by mistress and then abandon them 
through indolence or, as his enemies claimed, ingratitude. Ner- 
vousness and poor health were responsible for various weaknesses; 
and at times his " case " seems pathological. He holds that virtue 
became his main passion about 1750; the facts show rather that 
passion became his main virtue a few years later. His individ- 
ualism develops into a peculiar type of megalomania. Jean-Jac- 
ques declares that there was never anything like his Confessions 
or anybody like him. He was a prodigy as a child. Later he felt 
that " en me montrant j'allais occuper de moi l'univers." He 
claims that he is unique, if not superior, whether as regards his 
passions, his indolence, or the various circumstances of his life. 
His temperament is made to explain and excuse his many errors. 
Other forms in which the personal note appears are: a proud in- 
dependence, a kind of wilful impressionism, imaginative exalta- 



486 ROUSSEAU 

tion, vagabondage, and a taste for simple pleasures curiously 
mingled with romantic sensations. These feelings were much 
stimulated by his long tramps, during which he learned to love 
and celebrate the charms of Nature. 
Rousseau thus indicates the kind of nature that he prefers: 

Jamais pays de plaine. ... II me faut des torrents, des ro- 
chers, des sapins, des bois noirs, des montagnes, des chemins rabo- 
teux a monter et a descendre, des precipices a mes pieds qui me 
fassent bien peur. 

Such a landscape, when encountered in youth and health, brings 
life to a pinnacle. And through the " pathetic fallacy " one's 
mood then colors nature; it also associates particular 
scenes with the image of the loved one- In the 
most powerful revery that Rousseau ever experienced, he was 
chiefly occupied with transposing scenic elements into a future 
life with Mme de Warens. Any occurrence in nature is likely 
to arouse ethereal joys or floods of meditation. He thinks out 
his books while walking, and it is in the forest that he attains to 
the vision of primitive times. Nature is then depicted in the 
Confessions, though not so frequently as in the Nouvelle Heloise, 
yet with the same sincerity and broad sweep, and even more 
poignantly and personally. 

The third modern note which Rousseau sounds is that of 
sentiment. He declares that sensibility was the main gift of his 
parents, that it has brought him both bliss and 
ensi 1 1 y ^ eS p a j r< Even as a child all the sentiments were 
known to him; he wanted to be loved by everybody. In old age 
he still wept over the songs of his childhood. His intelligence is 
slow as compared with his emotions, and he sets the value of 
right feeling far above the value of ideas. " La froide raison n'a 
jamais rien fait d'illustre." Jean-Jacques himself has essentially 
I'ame aimante; and such expressions, together with " expansions 
and ecstasies/' tears and embraces and beating pulses, constantly 
recur. He finds the Parisians shallow in sentiment; he af- 
firms that love and friendship are the guiding stars of his own 
life. His love affairs are in fact the most extraordinary thing 
about Rousseau. They are of all varieties and moods, idyllic or 
sensual. Generally imagination plays the greater part, Plato- 



LA NOUVELLE HELOISE 487 

nism and idealism are much dwelt upon, but lasting serviceable 
affection is not conspicuous. In his affair with Mme d'Houdetot 
he insists that the delights of I'amitie amoureuse drew him 
more than the senses, that women both consoled and educated 
him. With Rousseau love was rarely complete. The following 
passage, concerning the " idyll " with Mme de Warens, proba- 
bly represents him at his best: 

S'il y a dans la vie un sentiment delicieux, c'est celui que nous 
eprouvames d'etre rendus Tun a l'autre. Notre attachement mutuel 
n'en augmenta pas, cela n'etait pas possible; mais il prit je ne 
sais quoi de plus intime, de plus touchant dans sa grande sim- 
plicite. . . . Nous nous accoutumames a ne plus penser a rien 
d'etranger a nous, a borner absolument notre bonheur et tous 
nos desirs a cette possession mutuelle, et peut-etre unique parmi 
les humains, qui n'etait point, comme je l'ai dit, celle de l'amour, 
mais une possession plus essentielle, qui, sans tenir aux sens, au 
sexe, a l'age, a la figure, tenait a tout ce par quoi Ton est soi, et 
qu'on ne peut perdre qu'en cessant d'etre. 

The Romantic characteristics just enumerated made their first 
striking appearance in French literature in the long sentimental 
"La Nouvelle nove l cau<e d Julie ou la Nouvelle Heloise (1761). 
Heloise " In this novel, the " new Heloise " loves and yields to 
her tutor as her namesake loved Abelard; but Julie is finally 
rescued by domestic guidance and marriage. After being duti- 
ful for six years she is again shaken by the reappearance 
of her lover, Saint-Preux, and the impossible triangle is resolved 
by her death. The sources of the book are two-fold: Richard- 
son's Clarissa Harlowe and the personal adventures of Rousseau. 
Richardson probably furnished the epistolary form, the concep- 
tion of the unfortunate heroine who is carried through ruin to 
death, and the tendency towards much analysis of sentiment. 
But Rousseau's experiences are what gave the book life in his 
own eyes and in those of his contemporaries. The scenes of his 
wanderings, especially around Lake Geneva, are portrayed with 
mingled precision and magnificence. Julie and Claire (her lively 
confidante) were orginally sketched from two young ladies of 
Rousseau's acquaintance, while the early love passages were in 
memory of Mme de Warens. But the book was intended to be 
more edifying than passionate, when Mme d'Houdetot suddenly 



488 ROUSSEAU 

became Rousseau's main inspiration. There is thus a discrep- 
ancy between the various parts of the novel: passion and indi- 
vidualism as opposed to moralizing and didacticism; a discrep- 
ancy which again thoroughly reflects Rousseau. These personal 
origins explain the main currents of the Nouvelle Heloise, which 
we may consider from the three aspects already chosen for the 
Confessions. 

Saint-Preux clearly resembles the author in that he is rash, 
passionate, weak, easily exalted, loving above his station. Like 
Rousseau, he talks much about virtue and fine sen- 
n ivi ua lsm timents and leaves us uncertain as to his capacity 
for living up to what he feels. In fact, the novelist talks through 
all his personages and shows little objectivity. The characters 
insist that they are " unique " in their situations and sentiments. 
Self-development is pleaded for in hundreds of passages. It ap- 
pears that the individual (Julie ) is sacrificed to ideals of family 
and duty, but the sacrifice is rather made to artificial social dis- 
tinctions which impede the course of true love. Thus the single 
person is conquered in his or her strife with artificial society — 
the favorite thesis of Rousseau. Society is more to blame than 
either Julie or her lover. So the novel in its chief tendencies 
remains individualistic. 

The " voice of nature," in several senses, is constantly heard. 
First we have the picturesque landscape, for which La Nouvelle 
Heloise, aided by English poetry, restored the vogue 
in France. There was born a fresh appreciation for 
the long and loving delineation of nature, often associated with 
man's sufferings and joys. The most invigorating passages are 
those which depict the scenes preferred by Rousseau. It is nearly 
always the lower Alps that he describes, the varying perspective 
of the Valais mountains, the contrast between the cultivated fields 
and the rougher hillsides, the shifting of color, the serenity of the 
heights. Nature is combined with the individual in two principal 
ways. It is of course associated with the loved one. The grove 
which witnessed the first kiss of the lovers is forever made a 
shrine. Saint-Preux thinks of Julie as definitely placed on this 
sward or on that rock, and Julie sees him as suggested by all 
the objects which he has left. Again, the pathetic fallacy is 
frequent, and this is the second way of fusing nature with the 
individual : 



HIS FEELING FOR NATURE 489 

Je trouve partout dans les objets la meme horreur qui regne au 
dedans de moi. On n'apercoit plus de verdure, l'herbe est jaune 
et fletrie, les arbres sont depouilles, le sechard 1 et la froide bise 
entassent la neige et les glaces; et toute la nature est morte a mes 
yeux, comme l'esperance au fond de mon coeur. 

Rousseau also demands the simple life, simple pleasures, and 
prefers the country to Paris, " ce vaste desert du monde." He 
Natural praises the natural emotions, such as family affec- 

Emotions tions, friendship and love — "la solitude a deux." 
In love, nature seeks full possession, both of heart and body. 
Nature also rules the choice of lovers and should rule their 
marriages, in an ideal society. Nature, rather than civilization, 
makes the moral differences between the sexes, the aggressive 
man, the protective woman. Ethically, " la bonte naturelle " 
is Rousseau's ideal. 

Streams of sentimental tears abound throughout the volume. 

Today we find the showers of Julie and the torrents of Saint- 

Preux rather too larmoyants. But the old regime 

n unen nee ded just this irrigation. It is difficult to free 
oneself from a suspicion of overdone feeling and rhetorical style ; 
but such expression is largely a matter of varying taste, and what 
seems false now was true in its time. Some instances of Rous- 
seauistic sentiment may be given. Julie attracts her lover pri- 
marily by her sensibilite; she speaks of affinities, of a " secret 
conformity of affections " proceeding from Nature. The best 
love should be unique and purifying. Saint-Preux, though less of 
a Platonist, agrees that love must be linked with morality, must 
have elevation and aim at perfection. Taken rightly, love is 
the whole thing in life, and the absolute view of this sentiment is 
one of the great novelties introduced by Rousseau. In the midst 
of their gallantries and frivolities, he made the worldlings " feel." 
Again, expansive virtue for Jean-Jacques is less a matter of prac- 
tical ethics than an impulse from the bottom of the soul. His is a 
sentimental morality, and he declares significantly that sentiment 
is his conscience. It is also the judge of art, it makes the true 
power of music and the interest of fiction for him. Compared 
with feeling, reason is nothing, and he exalts, beyond reason and 
beyond sustained morality, the theory of the exquisite moment 

1 The north-east wind. 



490 ROUSSEAU 

made immortal by recollection and revery. Certainly in the 
moral world Rousseau confuses kinds and values; but the 
Nouvelle Heloise opened powerful fresh channels for literature. 
It still attracts readers through its appreciation of love and 
nature, as well as through its finely eloquent style, Romantic in 
its essence and influence. 

To go back in time, Rousseau's first printed work was the 
Discoars sur les Sciences et les Arts (1750). Probably under the 
The Two influence of Diderot and in a state of imaginative 
"Discours" exaltation, he decided to maintain, in the Dijon 
Academy debate, that the arts 2 and sciences are con- 
nected with the corruption of humanity. Much of the essay 
is declamatory and paradoxical and shows little historical knowl- 
edge. Yet in his praise of the old Roman vertu, the author 
indicates the main principle of all his subsequent work: the 
opposition of artificial society to a simpler life, to which, as far 
as practicable, man should make his civilization conform. 
This principle, in another aspect, also underlies the second essay, 
Discours sur Vorigine et les fondements de Vinegalite parmi les 
homines (1755). Rousseau here has a vision of primitive man 
as a happy amoral animal, equal in all respects to his neighbor. 
But he lives separated from this neighbor, and the " state of na- 
ture " is a state of isolation. With the organization of society, 
man becomes gradually less free and equal. Interdependence, 
strife, ambition are developed, particularly through the posses- 
sion of property, which Rousseau views as the root of all evil, 
The foundation of the political State came about in order to 
protect property, to uphold the rich and oppress the poor. In- 
equality led to slavery, and Rousseau sees no escape save through 
a general uprising. The power and daring of this Discours, in 
spite of its many mistakes, made it figure along with the Contrat 
social in the propaganda of the Revolution. 

c The first cha P ters of the Contrat social ( 1762 ) 

social": are individualistic, but as a whole the work stands 

Summary f or a constructive organization of democratic society 
and for the recognition of moral principles in politics. Neither 

8 This thesis is developed with regard to literature in the Lettre a Dalembert sur 
les spectacles (1758), in which the drama and Moliere particularly are condemned as 
immoral. 



LE CONTRAT SOCIAL 491 

the right of the strongest, nor divine right, nor the family, is the 
true source of human society. In the (hypothetical) primitive 
" contract " which should today be reinforced, it was a ques- 
tion of mutual consent and obligation between members of a 
self-governing community. The forfeiture of " inalienable 
rights " in favor of an oppressive monarch is a void contract ; but 
Rousseau then urges the alienation of many individual claims in 
favor of the community, the popular State. Each person is at 
once subject and citizen-ruler in this collective body politic. 
Such is the famous doctrine of popular sovereignty. The law is 
the expression of the " infallible " general will. Its agent is the / 
governing or executive body, which may be of several kinds. A 
sort of aristo-democracy is preferred, a cabinet ministry which 
shall be controlled by the sovereign people through referendums 
and the like. The general will implies both a collective con- 
sciousness and a public spirit, and Rousseau holds that under 
modern conditions " neither reason nor the moral law is to be real- 
ized by man except in and through the civil state." The author now 
modifies these abstract ideals by considerations of circumstance 
and expediency. He concedes that some of the rights which 
have been taken from the individual subject may be guardedly 
handed back to him. A small State should be democratic, but 
a large one rather monarchical (cf . Montesquieu) . Having small 
democracies in mind, Rousseau held that representative gov- 
ernment was not truly popular. Sometimes unanimity of the 
popular vote is demanded, sometimes merely a plurality. 3ut 
such attenuations and uncertainties do little to modify the effect 
of the Contrat social in its main features: equality before the 
law; the rights of the individual as merging in the interests of 
the State; hence State sovereignty and what might be called 
democratic despotism. 

Disregarding other errors and confusions, we may emphasize 
the last idea as containing the germs of much subsequent evil. 
Fundamental personal rights — the right of free asso- 
ciation, of choosing one's religion and of using one's 
property — are made subordinate to those of the sovereign 
State. The despotism of the Terror derived very considerably 
from Rousseau, and the modern German State owes something 
to his conception of absolute sovereignty. On the other hand, 



492 ROUSSEAU 

Rousseau did a great deal to forward the general democratic 
idea; his theory of the Contract may be stripped of its hazy 
primitivism and taken more justly to mean that government 
must depend on the " consent of the governed." The Contrat 
social is the one work in which Rousseau leaves individualism; 
he goes indeed to the other extreme of collectivism. His errors 
are due both to a lack of the historical sense — any sense of 
development or of a complex of conditions — and to unbalanced 
or confused thinking. His " temperament," which had its great 
value in his imaginative or personal works, often leads him astray 
in matters of sound knowledge and reasoning. 

The opposition between nature and society, particularly as 
regards education, is again enforced in Entile (1762). This 
" educational romance " is partly fictional, partly 
autobiographical; as a treatise, it has links 
with the simplifying and realistic ideas of Rabelais and of Fe- 
nelon. The boy Emile progresses from the education of the 
senses to that of the intelligence and the emotions. The child 
should be brought up without constraint, knowing first a moth- 
er's care, then passing to a governor or father, whose primary 
object should be to " faire un homme." Between the ages of 
five and twelve, the boy remains in a " state of nature," re- 
ceiving no regular lessons, learning rather from experience and 
example, talking with common folk and persistently asking 
questions. Emphasis is laid on physical exercises and only 
after the age of twelve does the youth actually study ; even then 
he studies things (object-lessons) rather than books. During 
adolescence he will read a few " historians of the soul," such as 
Plutarch, and gradually his sentiments will be awakened. 
Finally, the youth will subdue his passions, travel a little, meet 
and marry his Sophie, who has 'been trained mainly to please 
Emile. And the author celebrates the wedding in a lyrical 
manner, not without absurdities. 

The chief objection to this general theory is that it does not 
fit a man for social life. Emile is brought up in an improbable 
state of isolation, and his education is neither thor- 
Criticism oughly human nor humanistic. The study of lan- 
guages and literature is not encouraged, the memory is not 
trained, and the boy's mind and soul are long kept inactive. He 



EMILE 493 

is reared as a solitary Rousseauist rather than as a future citi- 
zen. But in many things concerning child-welfare the author's 
views are sound. In this respect he inaugurated an educational 
revolution. Mothers began to nurse their children, people began 
to study handicrafts, and physical exercises were made more 
prominent in France ; in Germany, Rousseau's " Gospel of child- 
hood," coming down through Pestalozzi and Froebel, forms 
the basis of the modern kindergarten. Rousseau's influence 
was due to the novelty and sincerity of his revolt against 
artificial systems and to the persuasiveness of his appeals to 
sentiments and passions. The natural education which he 
recommends stands for simplicity versus apparatus, for real 
objects versus forms, and for first-hand experiences versus 
authority. 

The fourth book of Emile contains the gist of Rousseau's re- 
ligion in the Profession de foi du Vicaire Savoyard. We have 
seen how in practice he changed from Protestantism 

e lgion £ Q Q a tholicism and back again, usually under per- 

sonal influences. His religion is also a highly individual 
and sentimental affair. It does not need logical proofs, 
but only emotions, a swelling sense of virtue and contact with 
the infinite. It has been best defined as a " sentimental 
Deism," with strong Pantheistic leanings; Rousseau sees the 
divine spirit in all nature. This emotional religiosity finds 
many echoes in the nineteenth century, beginning with Chateau- 
briand. 

Rousseau appears then as a man of unfortunate life and of very 

mobile character. His strivings towards virtue were in the end 

sincere, but his ethical message is blurred by his 

oncusion egotism and by his tendency to exalt sentiment 
above knowledge and reason. The same objections apply to his 
dealings with politics and education, where the mind rather 
than the heart and imagination should be in control; yet in 
neither of these fields can his great contributions be ignored. 
Rousseau, more than any other writer of his century, counted 
powerfully upon the Revolution, through both the people and 
their leaders (Mme Roland, Robespierre), in both its idealistic 
and its excessive phases. Indeed, some hold that it is chiefly the 
excessive side of Rousseau that has prevailed, in matters of con- 



494 ROUSSEAU 

duct as well as in politics and literature. In the last domain, how- 
ever, in the Confessions and the Nouvelle Heloise, his very de- 
fects become in some sort virtues. The exaltation of the ego and 
the heart, the freeing of the imagination, the passionate expres- 
sion of man's affiliations with Nature and with the vast unknown 
not only give immortality to Rousseau's own Romanticism, but 
make him the father of the subsequent Romantic movement. 3 
His eloquent prose is refashioned in the lyrics of Lamartine 
and of Musset. Thus he exerts an expansive influence in several 
fields, and with all his faults he appeals to something abiding 
in human nature. 

Bernardin de Sainte-Pierre (1737-1814), the immediate disciple 
of Rousseau, resembled him in leading an eccentric, vagrant and 
Bernardin dreamy life. He was subject to melancholy, mad 
Pierre" 1 " a ^ times, but successful in both worldly and literary 
ways, towards the end of his career. He first met Rousseau in 
1772, and yielded at once to the spell which led him to produce 
books and to preach the worship of Nature. Bernardin's 
Etudes de la Nature (1784) is characteristic of the author in its 
mingled exoticism and pseudo-science. Nature is viewed as 
the source of all good, of all utility and beauty; she should be 
observed less by savants than by sentimental believers. In the 
latter role, Saint-Pierre undertook to show that the whole aim of 
creation was the happiness of man, and he makes an excessive 
use of the doctrine of final causes. (For instance, cantaloupes 
are divided by kindly nature into sections for family eating.) 
Better than his logic is Bernardin's analysis of sentiment. He also 
forestalls Romantic melancholy in his fusion of man and nature ; 
when it rains the landscape seems to him " une belle femme qui 
pleure." The ardor of his feeling imparts a communicative fire 
to his descriptions, which are full of color and movement, and 
he has a keen sense of the picturesque. The specific element 
which he adds to Rousseau is exoticism. He describes not only 
Europe but also tropical scenes, and this knowledge and feeling 
for exotic nature is continued in Paul et Virginie (1788). Here 
the setting is the Ile-de-France (Mauritius), which the author 
knew quite well. The subject of the story is the development of a 
young pair according to natural education and sentiment. The 

3 See below, Bk. V, Ch. II and Bk. VI, Chs. II and IV. 



PAUL ET VIRGIN1E 495 

effects of landscape, as mingled with intimate human life, and the 
growth of adolescent love are well depicted, less so is the ship- 
wreck and tragic climax. Paul et Virginie is a Rousseauistic 
idyll; it is not a great book, but it still retains a certain charm 
for the sentimentally minded. 



CHAPTER II 
MADAME DE STAEL. CONSTANT. 

The reader is doubtless acquainted with the series of dyna- 
mic changes that took place in France from the death of Louis 
XV to the battle of Waterloo. The succession of 
1S ory events, briefly, is as follows: the reign of the 

well-meaning but inadequate Louis XVI (1774-89) ; the vain 
endeavor of several excellent ministers, notably Turgot and 
Necker, to stem the rising tide; and during this period the 
participation of France in the American cause; the convocation 
of the States- General, the formation of the Constituent Assem- 
bly and the fall of the Bastille (1789) ; the defeat of the milder 
Revolutionaries (les Girondins) and the Reign of Terror (from 
1793) ; the inauguration of European wars on a large scale; 
the National Convention superseded by the Directory (1795- 
99) ; Napoleon Bonaparte as First Consul (to 1804) and as 
Emperor (to 1815) ; his victories, his domination of Europe, the 
efforts of the Allies and the final abdication of Napoleon. 

The effect of the Revolution on pure literature could hardly 
be immediately beneficial. As in the Great War, people's 
thoughts were running in other channels, and pas- 
ana the sions were too inflamed to allow the necessary de- 
Revolution tachment. The Revolution practically destroyed 
the old society, together with the tradition of the salons and 
the predominant influence of women — except that of Mme de 
Stael. Modern journalism took strong root in this epoch; at 
one time several hundred periodicals were in circulation, and 
Napoleon found it expedient to reduce this number materially. 
Usually journalism, in its virulence and prejudice, is the typical 
expression of Revolutionary literature. Better than the other 
periodicals were the Decade philosophique, the organ of the 
" ideologues," and the liberal Journal des Debats. Camille 
Desmoulins is probably the most noted journalist of the age; 

496 



MME DE STAEL 497 

his letters written from prison show a fevered sensitive soul, 
which the Revolution pushed almost to the verge of madness. 
The great orator of the time was the Marquis de Mirabeau, a 
man of strong passions and intellect; this double strength still 
vibrates in his speeches, whose eloquence now seems old- 
fashioned in some particulars but was based upon fact and 
logic as well as emotional appeal. The condition of the theater 
and of poetry under the Revolution has already been stated. 1 
In short, no great books were produced until Napoleon had re- 
stored order. At the very beginning of the nineteenth century 
two great writers come to the fore: Mme de Stael and Chateau- 
briand. 

Germaine Necker de Stael (1766-1817) was of Swiss parentage 
but French upbringing. The ministry of her father, the finan- 
cier Necker, was virtually the last hope of the old 
regime. Her mother founded the brilliant " salon 
Necker." Germaine's happy home, its social spirit and the 
influence of her father counted for much in her life and ideals. 
She was a precocious child, listening eagerly to such talkers as 
Marmontel and Buffon. Her ardent sensibility appears in her 
early writings on Rousseau. She was led into a foolish manage 
de raison with the Baron de Stael-Holstein, the Swedish ambas- 
sador, who gave her an eminent position, but who seemed un- 
congenial and unlovable. She immediately started a salon of 
her. own and became a young queen among the most intelligent 
groups of the dying monarchy. Her influence was not political, 
and the Revolution soon submerged her power. She joined the 
party of victims and emigres, whom she generously helped. In 
1792, she began her series of flights to Coppet, an estate near 
Geneva, and after that date she appeared only intermittently 
at Paris. The crisis of her life was her affair with Benjamin 
Constant, who owed much of his success to Mme de Stael, but 
who finally wearied of her. In 1795 she was allowed to return 
to France, where she consorted with the liberals and the Republi- 
cans. But she was soon accused of political intriguing and was 
persecuted by several French governments. In 1802, however, 
she reached the height of her power in Paris, conducting a 
famous salon, frequented by Mme Recamier, Constant, Fauriel 

> See above, Bk. Ill, Chs. I and IV. 



498 MADAME DE STAEL 

and others. Her early hopes of Napoleon had ended in dis- 
appointment, and he became her enemy. The lady, as usual, 
was too free-spoken. Police decrees closed her salon and practi- 
cally banished Mme de Stael. She traveled in Germany and 
Italy, but made her headquarters at Coppet, holding a court 
which rivaled that of Voltaire a generation before. The death 
of her husband did not lead to a marriage with Constant. 
Sorrow and bereavement deepened her mind, while her foreign 
experiences bore fruit in her masterpieces. As a middle-aged 
woman she married a young man named De Rocca, who seems 
to have really cared for her. She traveled in Russia and visited 
England for the second time. Soon after the triumph of the 
Allies, which did not realize her political ideals, she died, ex- 
hausted by her stormy career. 

It was a pathetic great life, largely because Mme de Stael 's 
enthusiasm and exceptional talents were frustrated by circum- 
stances and therefore she never attained happiness. 
Character Impatient, frank and not very tactful, she dismayed 
men as different as Schiller, Scott, Byron, Napoleon and Jou- 
bert. Wherever she went, says Sainte-Beuve, she was " destinee 
a porter du mouvement et de Timprevu." She had an eager 
need for fresh knowledge and fresh contacts, an almost universal 
intelligence and much capacity for affection. She loved her 
father and adored his memory, which is enshrined in Corinne. 
She was an excellent mother; and she said truly that friendship 
was the " religion of her life." When disappointed in the love of 
men — Narbonne, Talleyrand, Constant — she turned to the love 
of mankind. She had a good heart, benevolent and gen- 
erous. Enthusiasm and sensibility were the salient traits of 
her youth; later she believed in a sterner stoicism and finally 
in the necessity of Christian duty and morality. She represented 
in her experience and work all the phases of France, from the 
epoch of the later philosophes, through the Revolution, down to 
the Empire and the Restoration. 

Mme de Stael had a virile and energetic mind, but her heart 
was quite feminine, while her sociability was a marked char- 
acteristic. " La vie " is her favorite word, and she 
Salon Spirit tendg to gee life in terms of " society." Conse- 
quently she writes with clearness, swiftness and an appeal to 



HER MINOR WORKS 499 

general cultured interest. Again, she was the most charming 
and absorbing talker of her time. Her written thought would 
often spring from her conversation and is clothed in conversa- 
tional form. Even in Corinne, the most artistic of her works, 
much is made of formal dialogue and of society. Thus her style 
shows a certain improvisation, a tendency to run on carelessly, 
but it has the qualities of impetuosity and naturalness. She 
is not a professional writer; books are simply the overflow from 
her very full life; literature with her is a way of keeping in 
touch with the world — " c'est de la conversation indirecte." 

Her early works show particularly the reveries, passions and 

ideals of her youth. The Lettres sur les ecrits et le caractere 

de Jean- Jacques Rousseau (1788) are a tribute to 

Early Works the writer who attracted her most. The book, De 

I' Influence des passions (1796), constitutes at once an indict- 
ment and a eulogy of such " dark influences " as love and ambi- 
tion. The steadier lights of morality and usefulness are recom- 
mended, but Mme de Stael is not yet purged of the spirit of 
Romanticism; while declaring that one should flee from the 
passions, she still perceives their fascination and their absorbing 
power upon life. The Reflexions sur la paix (1794) show a 
singularly moderate tone and a political sagacity in the midst 
of turmoil. Sympathizing with the republican idea, she is yet 
opposed to fanaticism and wishes an even-handed justice. 
Finally, her Essai sur les fictions may be viewed as the stepping- 
stone to her greater productions both in fiction and criticism. 
She holds that the novel as a genre should be more esteemed 
and better done; it will be the form of the future, especially 
when it displays all sides of life and not merely the sentiment 
of love. She prefers truly psychological fiction, which turns 
into drama the changes and subtleties of the human heart; and 
she still believes in the consoling effect of romances, in their 
power to remove us to an ideal world. She said that the carry- 
ing off of Clarissa Harlowe seemed an " event " in her own 
youth, and on her death-bed she was found reading Walter Scott. 
Mme de StaeTs novels renovate the form of fiction and closely 
reflect her personality. " Corinne est l'ideal de 
Mme de Stael; Delphine est la realite pendant sa 



" Delphine " 



jeunesse " (Sainte-Beuve) . In other words, the former novel 



500 MADAME DE STAEL 

shows more of the writer's intelligence and the latter more 
of her sensibility. Both partake of the nature of " confessions." 
Both dwell on the idea that a superior woman is destined to 
misfortune, if she opposes the fixed views of man; but while 
Corinne has the superiority of talent, the heroine of Delphine 
(1802) surpasses through her character and heart. The latter 
story is a story of self-sacrifice in favor of a poor sort of lover, 
a copy of the one who made Mile de Lespinasse so unhappy. 
Delphine has something of the passionate style of Mile de Les- 
pinasse, though it is more directly modeled on Rousseau. The 
form is that of the epistolary novel, and the book suffers from 
the artifices demanded by this method of narration. It is also 
a " lyrical novel," like the Nouvelle Heloise, giving the greatest 
place to love, its transports and problems. It is modern in that 
it poses the question of a woman's right to struggle for her place 
in the sun and to keep her individual conscience. It states the 
ideal which permeates much of Mme de StaeTs work — " the 
desire for happiness in marriage." The style is sometimes in- 
correct and hasty, whereas the plot is improbable and roman- 
esque. But Delphine remains a stimulating and disturbing 
book, on account of its individualism, its subtlety and its fine 
conception of feminine character. 

Corinne (1807) is a greater novel and the writer's master- 
piece from an artistic standpoint. Here there is a closer sense 
of style and a better sustained eloquence. The 
novel not only revealed the beauties of Italy to 
France, but it showed the authoress at the apogee of her powers. 
For Europe henceforth she was known as the writer of Corinne, 
taken as the symbol of the independence of genius. The heroine, 
like her creator, is a talented improviser, who converses to a 
select circle on literature, love and death. She also resembles 
Mme de Stael in feeling the rivalry between fame and love, in 
•experiencing much hostile criticism, and above all in her need 
for an understanding husband. She has apparently found him 
in Lord Nelvil, a rather stiff Englishman, but there are family 
vetoes against their union, and Corinne finally yields her sweet- 
heart to a "truly English" maiden. Much of the action is 
laid amid Italian scenes and there are long digressions con- 
cerning Italian art, literature and manners, which remind one 



HER LITERARY CRITICISM 501 

rather too much of a guide-book. This feature, together with 
certain improbabilities and conventions in the plot, give the 
story an old-fashioned air. But the intermingling of sight- 
seeing with heart-affairs is well done, and in sentiment and 
thought, Corinne is absolutely a first-class novel. It has 
spiritual unity and it is a cultural landmark. Its penetration, 
its melancholy, the sweet frank charm of the heroine, her 
nobility of character, and a deeply moving note which comes 
from personal experience are still most effective and give the 
story its high place in the finer literature of love. And, as 
Brunetiere observes, the psychological excellence of Mme de 
Stael is only equaled by her historical importance. That is, 
Delphine and Corinne are the first modern novels to give an 
inside view of French society at a crucial epoch. Mme de 
Stael, then, succeeded in her effort to raise fiction to a higher 
dignity of intrinsic worth and of general consideration. Her 
wide powers of sympathy and her thorough feminism make her 
the ancestress of George Sand and the individualistic school. 
But it is notable that Mme de Stael does not allow passion to 
triumph and that she maintains the usual moral standards. 

In literary criticism, her work emphasizes a new point of de- 
parture. She is the first wholly to break away from the abso- 
" De la luteness of Classical standards 2 and to emphasize 

Litterature" that cosmopolitan spirit which recognizes the 
relativity of taste and freely admires the beauties of foreign 
countries. Also she changes the direction of criticism from .the 
study of detail (rhetorics, treatises on taste, commentaries) to 
the study of literature in its relation to other social currents — 
the modern idea of " Kulturgeschichte." In the introduction to 
De la Litterature (1801), she says : 

Je me suis propose d'examiner quelle est rinfluence de la 
religion, des moeurs et des lois sur la litterature, et quelle est 
1'influence de la litterature sur la religion, les moeurs et les lois. . . . 
On n'a pas suffisamment analyse les causes morales et politiques 
qui modifient l'esprit de la litterature. 

These rapports and others, such as historical circumstances, the 
structure of society and especially the genius of each race, she 
connects with her special subject, quite in the manner of Montes- 

2 See above, pp. 346-47; Voltaire had not dared to go so far. 



502 MADAME DE STAEL 

quieu, and she uses many of the divisions that appear in the 
Esprit des lots. De la Litterature is, in fact, an eighteenth- 
century book in that it revives the question of progress, aims 
at human perfectibility and sets liberal philosophy above all 
else. Its argument along these lines is hampered by the old 
confusion between an advance in the arts and in the other 
fields of human endeavor. Mme de Stael admits, indeed, this 
"principe des beaux arts: l'imagination ne permet pas la per- 
fectibilite indefinie." But in practice she is so ardent in up- 
holding the cause of intellectual progress that she diminishes 
the role of creative genius and sets the thought of the 
eighteenth century above the more artistic literature of the 
seventeenth. Thus she is a " Modern." As regards other coun- 
tries, she is disposed to set Rome above Greece, since the former 
civilization came later in time; and she was not yet well 
acquainted with Italy and Germany. In these connections, the 
reader must allow for misconceptions and inaccuracies. But 
Mme de Stael becomes a critical prophet in making her great 
and lasting distinction between the " Literatures of the North " 
and those of the South: Great Britain and Germany as opposed 
to the Mediterranean countries, or the Teutonic versus the 
Classical and Romance languages. The qualities of the 
North are courage, a melancholy imagination, metaphysical 
brooding and mysticism. These qualities are well displayed in 
Ossian, who is erroneously called the " Homer of the North." 
More plausibly, poetic genius is associated with the misty 
English skies and comes to an admirable culmination in Shake- 
speare and Milton. For the Northern imagination loves the 
sea, the wind and wild heather, and thoughts of the other world 
are blown across these cloudy horizons. Thus Montesquieu's 
theory of climate is renovated. Mme de StaeTs liberal spirit 
also attempts to reconcile the newly born political ideals with the 
progress of literature. Intellectual progress must be "conse- 
crated by liberty, guaranteed by democratic institutions and 
manners, and reinvigorated by cosmopolitanism." But litera- 
ture, together with other things, is an " expression of society," 
aristocratically viewed. This book was the first of the writer's 
works to create a commotion. It was severely judged by the 
semi-official and dogmatic critics of the Empire. It also in- 



ON GERMANY 503 

stituted the rivalry between Mme de Stael and Chateau- 
briand, who aptly said: " Vous n'ignorez pas que ma folie a 
moi est de voir Jesus-Christ partout, comme Mine de Stael la 
perfectibilite." 

The bold distinctions between North and South are reinforced 
in De I'Allemagne, which was suppressed by Napoleon's orders 
.« De i»Aii e - in 1810 and finally published in 1813. This is cer- 
magne " tainly the masterpiece of Mme de Stael as a thinker. 

It is the book which first disclosed Germany to France and 
which gave a worthy image of the outburst of genius associated 
with the age of Goethe. Apart from any theories, the basic 
qualities of the work are the unusual breadth, penetration and 
sympathy, which still make De I'Allemagne such satisfactory 
critical reading. It consists of four parts: (1) a general view of 
Germany; (2) its literature; (3) its philosophy; (4) a treatise 
on religion and " l'enth ousiasme." Of these, the second part 
is of chief importance for us, since the writer's knowledge of the 
country itself was not very wide. Outside of court and literary 
circles, she had seen little of general manners or of middle-class 
life, which she idyllizes. 

She begins her critical treatment by regretting that the 
French will not do justice to German literature, because of 
linguistic barriers and inherent national prejudices. Among 
these are the French faith in rules, the power of tradition, of 
public opinion, and especially the social standpoint which 
French writers too constantly bear in mind. Here and elsewhere, 
she holds — rather against the grain, one supposes — that 
solitary thought and feeling constitute the strongest basis for 
literary creation. The Germans now are independent and indi- 
vidual in their books, as they long were in their political units. 
It is true that they often tend to obscurity, " se plaisent dans les 
tenebres," and their prose is negligent as compared with the 
cult of style in France. In the drama, all that concerns plot 
and action is better handled by the French ; but a German play 
will go deeper in psychology, in heart-interest and in the study of 
strong passions. From this point on the writer pleads for inter- 
national tolerance in letters and for the benefits which the French 
particularly would derive from admitting the best of German 
ideas and emotions. 



504 MADAME DE STAEL 

All this illustrates the candor and personality which made 
the charm of Mme de Stael and which she most admired in the 
Germans. She revolted against the Classical rules and models, 
she preferred subjectivity, sentiment, imagination and revery. 
Therefore she is plainly for the North against the South (includ- 
ing in the latter division the Classic age of France). She now 
definitely connects the North with the word " Romanticism." In 
Germany, she says, the term " Romantic " has recently been in- 
troduced and applies to the kind of poetry that mingles chivalry 
and Christianity. The English have surpassed in this kind. 
The South is more clear-sighted and pagan; so classic poetry is 
that of the ancients and their imitators. Either kind is ad- 
missible, for a natural and national diversity of tastes springs 
" des sources primitives de l'imagination et de la pensee." But 
on the whole she contends for the inspiration of indigenous 
Romanticism rather than the imitation of transplanted 
Classicism. She chiejiy admires Goethe, Schiller and Lessing. 
She is not thorough on philosophy, which she knew mostly 
through Schlegel, but she sees the importance of Kantian 
idealism — "the starry heavens above and the sense of duty 
within." She stresses morality in the third as well as in the 
fourth part of the book, where " enthusiasm " now takes on a 
deeper and sterner note. Genius for her should finally serve to 
manifest " la bonte supreme de Fame." As a critic, her contact 
with art is not immediate and spontaneous, but rather intellec- 
tualized and ethical. 

By selection and idealizing, Mme de Stael gave a rather 
rose-colored picture of Germany, as Heine showed in his 
Deutschland. But her impulse toward Teutonic studies was 
felt by such men as Cousin in France, by Ticknor 
Her n uence an( j p re scott in America. It was largely through 
her initiation that the movement towards German universities 
began. More widely, the critical and cosmopolitan spirit of 
Mme de Stael, together with her fine Romanticism of feeling, 
counted upon diverse groups. In poetry, her theory of enthusi- 
asm influenced especially Lamartine. In criticism, the cosmo- 
politan tone of the Globe, Hugo's Preface de Cromwell and 
the exotic gleanings of Nodier owe a good deal to her guidance. 3 

8 For these and other names, see next Book. 



CONSTANT 505 

In politics and history, the liberal doctrinaires were cer- 
tainly affected by the latest and most mature of her books, 
the Considerations sur la Revolution frangaise (published post- 
humously, 1818). The "trio of the Sorbonne " — Villemain, 
Guizot, Cousin — are her disciples. The first-named more com- 
pletely makes literature the expression of society and also stud- 
ies international literary influences. Guizot figures among the 
group of translators and propagandists, who mainly through 
Mme de StaeTs impulsion, promote the vogue of Shakespeare 
and of Schiller. In general, as Sainte-Beuve says, she helped 
restore the sense of the infinite, which is the spirit of the North. 
A ripe mind, a deep heart and a keen enthusiasm are the per- 
sonal qualities which she impresses upon her work. She en- 
larged the borders of her country, she helped to Europeanize 
modern thought. 

By the side of Mme de Stael, her lover cuts rather a poor 
figure. A native of Lausanne, Constant was early naturalized 

_ . as a French citizen and played a considerable politi- 

Benjamm " , . 

Constant, cal role. His character forms a singular mixture of 

1767-1830 intellectual strength and moral weakness. He was 
a liberal skeptic, an acute logical thinker and a psychological 
analyst of the first order. But " Constant l'inconstant " had 
a feeble will, an excitable, over-active temperament, an 
arid egotistical nature. He was a perpetual diner-out, 
talker, duellist, Don Juan and sensation-seeker. On account 
of his two-fold nature, he has been called " un homme qui re- 
gardait un enfant," and like Chauteaubriand's Rene and Lord 
Byron, he was one of the great biases of the Romantic period. 
His character appears nakedly in Adolphe (1816), as a mix- 
ture of egotism, passion and irony. Adolphe falls out of love 
with his mistress and makes her suffer cruelly; he 
too suffers because of his very impotence in feeling. 
The successive steps in this affair are treated with rare pro- 
fundity and give the impression of close living truth. Indeed, 
the chief scenes and sentiments were actually lived, since the 
heroine, Ellenore, is a compound of Constant's two loves, Mme 
de Charriere and Mme de Stael. The gentle devotion of the one 
and the impetuous and exigent temper of the other do not make 
a unified character. Otherwise, Constant shows much insight in 



506 MADAME DE STAEL 

portraying human weaknesses. The decadence of love; the in- 
tervention of amour-propre, that great stumbling-block of 
French lovers; the effect of Ellenore's mature age and of her 
too clinging disposition; the self-torture of Adolphe and his 
subjection to public opinion; the painful and false side of such 
liaisons: all these phases are considered with penetration and 
restraint. The style is sober, clearly fitting the thought, not 
rhetorical. Constant did not have a creative imagination, and 
his characters are real people, somewhat changed. But he had 
the two gifts of clairvoyance and of precision. Consequently 
Adolphe, an intensely psychological novel, is the first of the 
ultra-modern variety and leads on to Stendhal. 



CHAPTER III 

CHATEAUBRIAND 

Of the three great forerunners of Romanticism, Chateau- 
briand exercised the most immediate and imposing influence. 
Chief Cosmopolitan and eloquent like Mme de Stael, 

Qualities he has a less disciplined brain and a colder heart. 
Sensitive, imaginative and self-centered like Rousseau, he is 
more aristocratic, less primitive, and absorbed in more exotic 
landscapes. Where Rousseau pleads for a generous sprinkling 
of nature, Chateaubriand believes in total immersion. Where 
Mme de Stael is humanitarian and forward-looking, Chateau- 
briand is pessimistic concerning man, rejects every liberal 
belief of the eighteenth century, and stands for the " Catholic 
and monarchical reaction." Naturally, then, he turns to the 
Gothic and medieval. Yearning for remoteness, he also chooses 
his subjects and scenes from the farthest Occident and Orient. 
He thus leads the Romantic movement in these important 
novelties: medievalism; the revival of aesthetic Christianity; the 
impassioned description of exotic nature; and the enthronement 
of the melancholy ego therein. 

Frangois-Rene de Chateaubriand (1768-1848) was born at 
Saint-Malo in Brittany, within sound of the sea which always 
stirred his imagination and feeling. He came of an 
ancient and illustrious family. His father was 
a stern despot, and his mother stood somewhat apart from her 
children; Rene's affection was rather for his sister, Lucile, who 
had a temperament much like his own. These two, in the lonely 
Chateau de Combourg, led a strange and melancholy youth, 
hushed in the presence of their gloomy father, listening to tales 
of ghosts and to the wind which moaned around the lonely turret. 
For Rene, it was a life of hard exercise, followed at night by 
much solitude and haunted meditation. No wonder that he dates 
from this epoch his lifelong sadness and his vast creative in- 

507 



508 CHATEAUBRIAND 

stinct. " Mon imagination allumee, se propageant sur tous les 
objets, ne trouvait nulle part assez de nourriture et aurait devore 
la terre et le ciel." He was sent away to school and became a 
good student in late adolescence. After considering several 
careers, he was suddenly put into the army by his father, pre- 
sented at court and to certain lights of the old regime; Males- 
herbes, the former minister, advised the journey to America 
which Chateaubriand undertook in 1791. He traveled from the 
seaboard cities to Niagara and probably to the Ohio, but he never 
saw the primeval southern forests which made his works so 
famous. Returning to France, he was drawn into a conventional 
marriage, then emigrated and played his part courageously as 
a soldier of the royal camp. Wounded and ill, disillusioned and 
desperate, he sought refuge in England, where he lived for eight 
years. At London, he was at first poverty-stricken and on the 
verge of suicide. Becoming acquainted with English country 
life, he had an idyllic affair with the daughter of a pastor. Fi- 
nally he met Fontanes, a sympathetic critic and counselor, who 
with Joubert later, was largely instrumental in advancing Cha- 
teaubriand's literary career. He returned to Paris, and the pub- 
lication of Atala (1801) was followed by the Genie du Chris- 
tianisme in the next year. This was at the time when Napoleon's 
" Concordat " aimed at reconciling France and the Catholic 
Church, a circumstance which assured to Chateaubriand and his 
Genie a brilliant success. From now on he is the lion of the 
salons, he lives but little with his wife, and he becomes distin- 
guished as statesman, ambassador, and the foremost literary 
figure of his age. 

It was the perpetual desire for fresh conquests that led Cha- 
teaubriand into politics. For a time he had the favor of Napo- 

Political leon ' but soon broke with k im and became a stanch 
Career legitimist. He was the chief promoter of the Chris- 

tian and monarchical tendency which centered around the Res- 
toration of 1815 and affected the earlier Romanticists, for ex- 
ample, Lamartine. Having made a splendid trip to the Orient, 
having won the devotion of duchesses and the ear of the public, 
it seems that at last Chateaubriand might have been happy. 
But his haughty spirit soon found defects in the new monarchy. 
Under whatever dynasty, it was Chateaubriand's nature to be 



HIS CHARACTER 509 

always in the opposition. Yet he was made ambassador, for 
short intervals, to Rome, to Berlin and to London; in England 
he lived in sumptuous contrast to his former poverty. As 
minister of foreign affairs, he threw his country into a brief war 
with Spain (1824). On the advent of the bourgeois monarchy 
of Louis-Philippe (1830), Chateaubriand withdrew from political 
life and henceforth reigned in the salon of Mme Recamier. Here 
he was viewed as a social and literary oracle, dominating and 
often disdaining the younger generation of writers. He pre- 
pared his final attitude by writing his Memoires oV outre-tomb e 
and by arranging for his burial in a little island near Saint- 
Malo, where his lonely tomb still confronts the sea. 

This agitated life contained features of grandeur, but was 
darkened by Chateaubriand's constant melancholy, egotism and 
ennui. " J'ai bailie ma vie," as he bitterly said, 
because his imperious imagination always outstripped 
reality. His perpetual longings for the unattainable brought 
into French literature the so-called mal de Rene. He was too 
intense, too self-centered and haughty. His pride devoured 
everything, leading to disgust with action, with affection, with 
glory and finally with himself. But his egotism rides above the 
wreck, not only permeating his Memoirs, but making him the 
chief hero of his other works. " II n'y a que Chateaubriand dans 
l'ceuvre de Chateaubriand." With the exceptions of the prin- 
ciple of honor and the Catholic religion, he affects to consider 
life an utter void and he enjoys a perverse satisfaction in the 
spectacle of human ruins and illusions. Thus it is not sur- 
prising that Chateaubriand represents primarily the literature 
of escape, and that his splendid gifts adorn the presentation of 
far-off civilizations, whether in the East or in the West. 

The Western influence, dating from his four months' stay 
in America, appears in Atala, Rene and Les Natchez; the 
Western Eastern, in which may be included much of Cha- 

Inspiration teaubriand's treatment of Christianity, is visible in 
the Genie du Christianisme and conspicuous in the Itineraire de 
Paris a Jerusalem and the prose epic, Les Martyrs. W T ith the 
partial exception of the Genie and of his Memoirs, all of Cha- 
teaubriand's important works deal either with the Orient or with 
the Occident. In the latter field he found more novelty and 



510 CHATEAUBRIAND 

exhibited more strength. He had composed, by 1800, a huge 
manuscript volume, describing his trip to America and the 
Indian tribe of the Natchez; for during the years of righting 
and exile, his visions of American vastness and his embellish- 
ment of Indian maidens had grown apace. He was ready now 
to extract from this manuscript such episodes as 
Atala and Rene. Atala (1801) is probably the 
most perfect of his works in its harmonious construction, the 
interest and charm of its characters, the high values of its 
scenery and style. It has a peculiar attraction for Americans, 
since it is the first work of French genius in which the scene is 
laid wholly in this country. Chateaubriand's accounts of the 
savannahs and forests of the old Louisiana territory have long 
been famous; and the flora and fauna which he exhibits in his 
luxuriant images and descriptions were according to the recorded 
documentation of the time. The same may be said of his general 
use of local color and local customs. As regards character, 
he adds the new note of " psychological exoticism " (Chinard) , 
or the absorbing depiction of modern struggles against a primi- 
tive background. But it may be admitted that his savages are 
rather too " good Indians " to be probable. The heroine, Atala, 
has been brought up by a Christian mother. Her lover, Chactas, 
later becomes half-civilized. As a young warrior, he was taken 
prisoner by a hostile tribe of which Atala was a member; she 
rescues him and flees with him into the forest; but she cannot 
marry him because of a vow made to her dying mother. The 
conflict in her mind, the love-passages in the forest, crowned by 
the death and burial of Atala, are very impressive and recall 
in places Marion Lescaut. Underlying the story are deep cur- 
rents of emotion which break out in extreme Romanticism: as 
where Chactas expresses a desire to clasp his beloved and 
soar with her through the debris of the world and eternity; and 
elsewhere the author declares: " Les grandes passions sont 
solitaires et les transporter au desert c'est les rendre a leur 
empire." This is Rousseauism, with more emphasis on wider 
spaces and the wildest desires. The style, as usual with Cha- 
teaubriand, is majestic and melancholy. The grave cadences 
of his prose seem naturally allied with this tale of " old unhappy 
far-off things," with the sweep of great expanses and eternal 



v 













THE MAL DE RENE 511 

passions. The descriptions of nature are both accurate and 
picturesque, and Atala worthily opens the nineteenth century as 
the first masterpiece of French eloquence after Rousseau. 

Another tragic story of the West was first published as a part 
of the Genie du Christianisme. Rene (1802) is but a brief 
episode, yet its influence upon both the form and 
sentiment of Romantic fiction was very great. The 
hero is another Chateaubriand, an ill-fated young Frenchman, 
who can find happiness neither in the civilization of Europe nor 
beyond the sea. He cannot live with his devoted Indian wife, 
and he relates to Chactas, now grown old, the melancholy his- 
tory of his sentimental experiences. These include poignant 
memories of childhood, the affection of an unfortunate sister, 
travels and adventures in the " stormy ocean of the world," 
attempts at suicide and finally the plunge into the American 
wilderness. The mat de Rene consists in the perpetual dis- 
appointment which confronts insatiable desires, whether con- 
cerning the sympathy of women, the consolation of Nature, or 
the venture of life as a whole. The mal is not wholly new, 
but the personal intensity of Chateaubriand gives it fresh poig- 
nancy. " Mon cceur est naturellement petri d'ennui et de misere." 
He finds existence only a shifting abyss and he calls on the 
longed-for storms to sweep him into unknown climes. By a 
sort of cosmic fallacy, the greater aspects of Nature are asso- 
ciated with man's demonic heart, whose movements are compared 
with the rising and sinking of the Mississippi's floods. The 
following passage may well illustrate Chateaubriand's dangerous 
charm: 

Je descendais dans la vallee, je m'elevais sur la montagne, 
appelant de toute la force de mes desirs l'ideal objet d'une flamme 
future; je l'embrassais dans les vents, je croyais l'entendre dans 
les gemissements du fleuve; tout etait ce fantome imaginaire, et 
les astres dans les cieux, et le principe meme de vie dans Tunivers. 

It is to be noted that the author is perfectly aware of his 
Romantic excesses; Chactas concludes with the safe moral: 
" II n'y a de bonheur que dans les voies communes." 

From his manuscript volume of Americana, Chateaubriand 
drew later the long epic narrative of Les Natchez (1826). The 



512 CHATEAUBRIAND 

subject is the massacre of the French colony of the Natchez in 
1727, with which is interwoven the story of the Indian adven- 
tures and loves of Rene and their tragic termination. 

es a c ez p^ an( ^ p r0 k a kjiity are hampered by Chateau- 
briand's insistence on certain stock devices of the epic form (cf. 
Les Martyrs) : invocations, apparitions, enumerations of tribes 
and troops, and particularly the intervention of angels and Indian 
gods in battles. Apart from this absurdity, the author again 
follows fact as regards both the central subject and the use of 
local and historical color. The characters offer interesting cases 
of exotic sentiments and conflicts. An older and more despairing 
Rene, who has been adopted by the Natchez, is observed in his 
ebb and flow from the savage to the civilized life, and back again. 
He is loved by Celuta, whom he weds through gratitude, and 
this bronzed heroine alternates between sentiment and duty — 
for Rene is supposed to have betrayed her tribe. The real traitor, 
Ondoure, and Rene's blood-brother, Outougamiz, are conventional 
figures of the epic. More individual and pleasing is the maiden 
Mila, whose naive feeling for Rene is well portrayed. The story 
ends in a general catastrophe of violence, suicide and murder. 

The work which marks the transition from the Western to 
the Eastern influence is the Genie du Christianisme (1802). 
"Le Genie du^ ms D0 °k stands at the center of Chateaubriand's 
Christianisme"system, whether as regards religion or art, forces 
which he here tries to amalgamate. He defends the " genius " 
of Christianity in maintaining that this faith has been produc- 
tive of greater results, in literature and the arts, than are found 
in the ancient pagan masterpieces. The Genie represents a revo- 
lution in criticism and aesthetics ; it breaks with the tradition of 
the Renaissance ; it is rather hostile to the eighteenth century ; it 
prefers the medieval and the Gothic, and aims at reviving the 
historic past of France; it is Romantic rather than Classical 
or philosophic in spirit ; it argues for the " beau ideal " or the 
principle of an artistic choice in nature; and it establishes the 
moi as the main source of inspiration: " On ne peint bien que 
son propre cceur et la meilleure partie du genie se compose de 
souvenirs." 

Chateaubriand believes that Christianity has developed the 
soul of man and made literature and the arts expressive of a 



ON CHRISTIANITY 513 

higher spiritual truth than was possible in the pagan " chaos." 
This holds even for writers like Racine and Voltaire, whose best 
The characters — Phedre and Lusignan — are Christian 

Argument in spite of themselves. The chief beauties of a 
" bizarre " product like the Divine Comedy, thinks Chateau- 
briand, also spring from Christianity. Milton is better appreci- 
ated by this critic than by any French writer hitherto. The 
Bible itself is discussed and praised as a literary monument. 
Yet Chateaubriand shows a w r ise moderation in esteeming the 
truth and taste of the best ancients, like Vergil. Again, Christi- 
anity is associated with the idea of solitude in nature. The 
nymphs and fauns have vanished, " pour rendre aux grottes leur 
silence et aux boix leurs reveries." The divine immensities of the 
deserts and of the American forests are now capable of a vaster 
inspiration. So modern descriptive poetry, of which Chateau- 
briand gives a faulty sketch, should be superior to the ancient. 
Also the modern Christian epic, using its own supernatural 
machinery, is better than the pagan variety. This support of 
the merveilleux chretien, challenging Boileau's Classical prin- 
ciples, is exemplified by the practice of Milton as well as of Dante 
and produced unfortunate results in Chateaubriand's own work. 
With regard to prose literature, it is not surprising that he re- 
jects " la philosophic," in favor of the more orthodox seventeenth 
century. As regards the tine arts, rather superficially treated, 
it is notable that he dwells on the religious side of Gothic 
architecture, which is linked with his passion for the past. There 
is a picturesque chapter on ruins, the " poetique des morts," which 
always attracted his interest. The Madonnas of the Italians 
and the orations of Bossuet are also cases in point, and the 
general conclusion is : " Que 1'mcredulite est la principale cause 
de la decadence du gout et du genie." 

But Chateaubriand's logic is not so serried as it may appear 
from the above presentation. He is more occupied with present- 
Defects and m § plausible sentiments or series of glittering 
Merits tableaux, often done in his handsomest bravura style. 

The Genie has been called a religious museum. Christian truth, 
declares one critic, can do without art and uses a sterner apolo- 
getic, as with Pascal. Just as Mme de Stael had a weakness for 
the pleasures of melancholy, so Chateaubriand indulges in the 



514 CHATEAUBRIAND 

pleasures of Christianity. He inaugurates, for France, the aes- 
thetic view of religion, which has been so prominent since. But 
his book represents a strong and, at its time, a necessary re- 
action. Eighteenth-century skepticism had fallen into des- 
iccation and materialism. It was the right moment for reli- 
gious revival. Chateaubriand's influence was felt on the Biblical 
poetry of the Romanticists and on certain writers of the historical 
school. His unparalleled prestige was largely based on the 
Genie du Christianisme. 

The prose epic of Les Martyrs (1809) is, as regards its central 
subject, a more old-fashioned Quo Vadis. It deals with the 
Eastern conversions, struggles and martyrdoms of the early 

Subjects: Christians under Diocletian. But this frame-work 
"Les Martyrs"^ extended through the recit of Eudore, the hero, to 
cover travels and experiences in various Roman provinces, in- 
cluding the Orient. The unity of the story sutlers through this 
extension. Its illusion, as a work of fiction, is weakened by the 
introduction of all the epic machinery of the merveilleux chretien. 
The best part of Les Martyrs is found in particular characters 
and episodes: the charm of Cymodocee, the heathen maiden 
whom Eudore loves and converts; the picture of Velleda, the 
stormy druidess; and the battle-scenes among the Franks, con- 
taining the war-cry of " Pharamond," which incited Thierry to 
write his history of the Merovingians. 

Whatever his anachronisms, Chateaubriand made wide studies 
for Les Martyrs, the results of which appear also in L'ltine- 
"L'ltine- raire de Paris a Jerusalem et de Jerusalem a Paris 
raire" (1811). This work, like Corinne, had a great 

success as a sort of glorified guide-book; it is written with more 
good-humor and is concerned more with everyday life than any 
other of Chateaubriand's productions. But it is artistically 
composed and well reveals his essential traits. The three high 
points in his travels were Sparta, Athens and Jerusalem, and 
the treatment of these places is climactic and impressive. The 
prevailing mood is that of saturation with the melancholy of 
ruins, the sadness of vanished glory, the mobility of human 
things amid the immobility of nature. The suavity of Greece is 
contrasted with the touching mystery of Calvary, and the reli- 
gious note is often sounded. The author admits that he is 



THE MEMOIRS 515 

more interested in monuments than in men. He went forth 
in the spirit of a crusader and he anticipated Byron by awaken- 
ing an enthusiasm for the Orient. 

This large collection of Memoirs is Chateaubriand's last will 
and testament. It is a voice speaking " from beyond the tomb," 
"Memoires to tell the whole truth about the author and his 
?' 0U v re » epoch. Unsuccessful when first published, the 

1848-50 Memoires are now recognized as one of the fore- 

most documents of the Romantic era. They contain all of 
Chateaubriand, his beauties and defects, his power, egomania 
and puerilities; they recount the several chief stages in his 
career, parading what he calls his "triple influence, religieuse, 
politique et litteraire "; they deal closely with the leading figures 
and events of his day, giving vivid sketches of Revolutionary 
types like Mirabeau and a full-length portrait of Napoleon as 
a despot. But the most fascinating pages of the Memoires are 
found in the early volumes where Chateaubriand dwells upon his 
formative years at Combourg, the dreams and yearnings of his 
adolescence. He thinks that a later visitor to the sacred spot — 

pourra reconnaitre le chateau; mais il cherchera vainement le 
grand bois: le berceau de mes songes a disparu comme ces songes. 
Demeure seul debout sur son rocher, I 'antique donjon pleure les 
chenes, vieux compagnons qui l'environnaient et le protegeaient 
contre la tempete. Isole comme lui, j'ai vu comme lui tomber 
autour de moi la famille qui embellissait mes jours et me pretait 
son abri: heureusement ma vie n'est pas batie sur la terre aussi 
solidement que les tours ou j'ai passe ma jeunesse, et l'homme 
resiste moins aux orages que les monuments eleves par ses mains. 

There are many such wistful passages ; for it is one characteristic 
of the Memoirs, composed from 1811-41, that they weave back 
and forth between the emotions of youth and the memories of 
age. The highest virtues of style are found in the reminiscent 
preludes to the several Parts into which the work is divided. 
Its tone, as a whole, is unequal ; vigor alternates with triviality, 
harmony and vision with bitterness and wrath; but throughout 
there is an effect of reality and passion recalling Saint-Simon. 
Perhaps this is due to the fact, of which Chateaubriand boasts, 
that he had actually lived what his books describe, whether 
as traveler, soldier, diplomat or publicist. He was almost the 
last to live and to write in the grand manner. 



516 CHATEAUBRIAND 

Chateaubriand's genius made itself felt through the double 
force of his morbid charm and his expansive imagination. As 
. seen in connection with Rene, the charm has its 

dangers, but it also has its delights. "Son role est 
d'enchanter." There is a seduction in his sensibility, a lulling 
sweetness in his melancholy, and a high excellence in his har- 
monious rhythms and images. Chateaubriand's very egotism 
has its fascination; the reader substitutes himself for the author 
and goes through similar moods of yearning, pride, isolation and 
disillusionment. Again, Chateaubriand was " all compact " of 
imagination, which quality he expands East and West in the 
comprehensive fashion of modern art. Hence the marvelously 
rich pictures of many lands and climes. He pours his soul out 
upon .all that is beautiful in Nature; but he cares little for the 
souls of other people, he is a poor psychologist. As oracle and 
leader emeritus, he exercised a great influence upon the Romantic 
movement. According to Faguet, " il est l'homme qui a re- 
nouvele Timagination franchise." For two generations such 
writers as Lamartine and Hugo, G. Sand and even Flaubert 
derive much of their earlier manner from Chateaubriand. In 
our own time, Pierre Loti is his most distinguished literary 
descendant. 



BOOK VI 
ROMANTICISM 

CHAPTER I 
THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT 

The full flowering of the Romantic Movement took place 
between 1820, when Lamartine published his Premieres Me&ita- 
History of tions, and 1843, when Hugo's last tragedy failed, 
the Period The political history of that period furnishes a sig- 
nificant background to its literary output: the individualism of 
despots, the royalist hopes and the growing sense of democracy 
are successively reflected in the work of the Romanticists. After 
Napoleon, the Restoration of the Bourbons was accomplished 
by a sharp monarchical reaction. Louis XVIII (1815-24) was 
at first obliged to grant a Constitutional Charter, with liberal 
provisions, and the Chamber of Deputies was established. But 
the returning emigres were very influential and soon a reac- 
tionary ministry was formed, combining aristocracy, royalism 
and strong Catholic sympathies. Censorship of the press and 
the sway of landowners were restored. These tendencies' be- 
came more pronounced under the reign of Charles X (1824- 
30) , who wanted to be a despot of the old regime. But France, 
having had a taste of liberty, was unwilling to submit. Pub- 
licists like Chateaubriand and Royer-Collard, professors, jour- 
nalists and the City of Paris all protested, with the result 
that the Bourbon monarchy was overthrown in 1830 (" Revolu- 
tion of July ") ; Louis-Philippe, Duke of Orleans, was made King 
of the French and the so-called " bourgeois monarchy " began 
(1830-48). This government, in turn, disgusted many writers, 
because of its lack of distinction and its addiction to timid 
compromises. 

Each new ruler had brought fresh hope to the younger genera- 
tions of which the Romanticists were composed. It was a time 

517 



518 THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT 

of expansive feeling and wide aspirations; but these were followed 
only too soon by disappointment and weariness when govern- 
Social ments and councils did not fulfil their promises. 

Background The social atmosphere was full of ferment, there was 
heard the clash of new and old, of the individual against the 
many. Hundreds of brilliant youths, abandoning the political 
arena, turned their talents to literature and art. They were no 
longer hampered by academic training or the tradition of the 
salons; they could be fully themselves. The renaissance of 
poetry and painting — fraternal arts which were now closely 
connected — the considerable development of journalism, the 
vogue of the " vie de boheme " and of romantic love- 
affairs: all this gave opportunities to these restless young men. 
Currents of dandyism, picturesque costumes or poses, and im- 
portant foreign influences served to direct or to adorn the new 
movement. 

Romanticism was primarily a revolt against the outworn 
principles of neo-classicism, as exemplified by the poetasters and 
Essential dramatists of the eighteenth century and the 
Features beginning of the ninteenth. Soon, however, the 
movement condemned the methods of Boileau and Racine as 
well. Consequently it rejected the old rules of versification 
and of tragedy. But more positive features appear among the 
chief tenets of Romanticism. It stood for individual liberty, for 
an expansion of the field of art, for the superiority of imagina- 
tion and feeling over reason, for a truly poetical revival. In 
its earlier phase, under the influence of Chateaubriand and 
Lamartine, it was curiously linked with a political con- 
servatism and a return to the national past. It was also 
more idealistic before 1830, whereas, after this date disillusion- 
ment and pessimism became more prominent in the work of 
various writers. 

Theophile Gautier, an ardent adherent of the Romantic cause, 
declares that the people of a later day can hardly understand 
Inspiration ^ ne effervescent enthusiasm of that time. There 
and Energy was a new sap of life, an intoxicating atmosphere, 
an absolute surrender to the poetic ideal. There are many 
records of the advance of the Romantic army upon Paris, 
nearly one hundred years ago. Personages of fact and of fiction, 



THE FIRST CENACLE 519 

undisciplined egoists like the heroes of Stendhal and of Balzac, 
followed Napoleon, the " great condottiere," in the direction of 
lawless and materialistic ambition. But others, like the inti- 
mate circle of Hugo, expressed their personalities through emo- 
tional experience and intense imaginings, with an outburst of 
tumultuous revolt and wild creative energy. In their assertion 
of individual rights, their deification of human love and the 
fatality of passion, their devotion to the long wonders of im- 
mortal beauty, they bring back to France a feeling which had 
been in abeyance since the days of Ronsard. 

The great writers of Romanticism were Lamartine, Hugo, 
Musset, Vigny, Gautier and George Sand; and, to a lesser extent, 
Leaders and Sainte-Beuve as critic, Dumas pere, Stendhal and 
11 Cenacies " Merimee. These names together with certain 
others will occupy us in the following chapters. But there were 
many minor writers who will here be dealt with briefly in connec- 
tion with the progress of the movement, the formation of the 
different groups or cenacies. First came the group which 
rallied around La Muse Frangaise. This journal lasted only 
"La Muse two years (1823-24), but it had a significant influence 
Frangaise" upon nascent Romanticism. As in the case of the 
Pleiade, its founders and chief contributors were seven in num- 
ber: Alexandre Soumet, Alexandre Guiraud, Emile Deschamps; 
Hugo and Vigny; Saint-Valry and Desjardins. The "two 
Alexanders," who were then among the foremost representatives 
of poetry and drama, were still semi-classical and timid in revolt. 
They came from Toulouse and they, with others of the group, 
were crowned by the Academie des Jeux Floraux of that city. 
Soumet is best known for his tragedy of Saul. He had a second- 
rate derivative talent, but he was then ranked as a demi-god and 
his prestige considerably aided the Muse. Guiraud wrote the 
prospectus for the journal, a valuable feature of which was the 
attention it paid to foreign literatures. Emile Deschamps actively 
launched the publication and furnished a salon for the first 
cenacle. As a poet, Deschamps is credited with a Lamartinian 
sweetness and grace. Lamartine himself remained apart from 
the circle. Its two minor adherents need not concern us, but let 
us note that several of Vigny's best poems appeared in the 
Muse; also five contributions from Hugo, including an interesting 



520 THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT 

review of Scott's Quentin Durward. In 1824, the main issues 
of Romanticism were still confused and vague; Hugo disavowed 
the term ; the new spirit was not yet disentangled from Classicism 
and royalism. But already it was sufficiently strong to call 
forth denunciations from academic critics, who, declaring that 
Romanticism " did not exist," thereby helped to crystallize its 
existence. 

The Muse suspended publication, and Soumet passed to the 
ranks of the enemy. The rest of the group were kept together 
The Salon by Charles Nodier, who received and encouraged 
de r Arsenal, them in his home at the Arsenal Library. Nodier 

1 894—97 

(see next chapter) was an indolent good-natured 
dilettante who had in him, it is said, the composition of ten men, 
including " poet, romancer, historian, bibliophile." He denned 
Romanticism as " la liberte regie par le gout," a remark which 
set the tone for his chatty receptions. Lesser lights of the Muse 
and of the Nodier cenacle were these: the wild Jules Lefevre, 
a Byronist; the witty Ulric Guttinguer; Baour-Lormian, trans- 
lator of Ossian; Chenedolle, a transition poet; and the 
beautiful Delphine Gay, known as the " Muse de la Patrie," who 
had the fortune to be admired by Classicists and Romanticists 
alike. 

By 1827, Victor Hugo had attained his poetic majority. 
In the same year he formed a close friendship with Sainte- 

T „ , Beuve, and these two constitute the head and front 
Le Grand ' . 

Cenacle, of the greatest Romantic cenacle. This was known 

1827-30 as a j e ce n ac l e de Joseph Delorme," such being the 

pen-name of Sainte-Beuve. In its membership were numbered 
such familiar names as Vigny, Nodier, Deschamps and Gut- 
tinguer; that weird poet, Gerard de Nerval; the enthusiastic 
Dumas pere; and the adolescent Musset, who came more cas- 
ually. The movement now takes on more significance and 
breadth; it includes painters (Delacroix) as well as poets; it 
makes the theater its chief stamping-ground; plays like Hugo's 
Marion Delorme are read to large gatherings; more important 
works are actually produced; and a critical direction is given 
to Romanticism through the efforts of Sainte-Beuve (see 
Bk. VIII, Ch. I) . With some justice, then, this group has been 
called " le cenacle de Joseph Delorme." But its creative leader 



JOURNALISM 521 

was, of course, Victor Hugo, whose priest-like personality was 
almost worshiped by his associates. Theophile Gautier, an- 
other enthusiastic admirer, was enlisted for the battle of Her- 
nani (1830), which marked the definite triumph of the move- 
ment. Shortly afterwards the unity of the Romantic school 
was broken up and the last cenacle was dissolved; partly be- 
cause of the Revolution of July, but more on account of dra- 
matic rivalries and the exaggeration of ideas and egoistic tend- 
encies. The current of production, however, continued until 
well into the forties. 

The severe censorship of Napoleon and some hesitation re- 
garding the " Charter " had much restricted the liberty of the 
press until about 1820. From then dates the foun- 
Influences: dation of modern literary journalism, the establish - 
Journahsm m ent of important critical reviews. They appear 
in considerable number between 1820 and 1830. They are 
mostly short-lived and reflect the confused conflicts of the time; 
those that are liberal in politics are often reactionary in litera- 
ture, and vice versa. La Muse Frangaise is the most thoroughly 
Romantic. But Le Globe (1824-30) had a wider scope and a 
vaster influence, and it aimed at liberalism in every sphere. It 
was founded by Dubois and other disciples of the " trio of the 
Sorbonne ; " x the " doctrinaires " were among its contributors, 
and Sainte-Beuve was its chief critic. These men expand the 
treatment of literature, in an intelligent and cosmopolitan spirit, 
to include social and political topics; and the various fields are 
divided up among expert writers. Romanticism is given ample 
room in the Globe, though few of these intellectuals are sensi- 
tive to the more imaginative and artistic values of the new 
movement. On the other hand, they adopt the formula that 
" literature is the expression of society," and they show wide 
cosmopolitan tastes, both of which tendencies proceed from Mme 
de Stael. If Rousseau is the fountain-head of Romanticism, 
Chateaubriand is its "Sachem," Lamartine its elder brother, 
and Mme de Stael its intellectual godmother. 2 

Mme de Stael, indeed, had given currency to the term 

1 Villemain, Guizot, Cousin; see below, Ch. VII; and for the "doctrinaires" 
or liberal bourgeois statesmen, see same chapter. 

2 A reference to the preceding Book will make this plain. 



522 THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT 

" Romantic." Her interest in Italy is responsible for French 
contacts with the works of Sismondi and Manzoni. But it is 

r . chiefly the increasing vogue of De I'Allemagne that 

Influences: makes us realize how Romanticism was a general 
Germany European movement, with emphasis on the liter- 
atures of the North. The Northern inspiration largely replaced 
the imitation of antiquity. The Germans who influenced the 
younger French writers are mainly those of the Golden Age, 
especially Goethe and Schiller. Goethe was long known as " the 
author of Werther" a work which fostered the sentimental- 
ism of Nodier's nouvelles, as well as the mat de siecle of Con- 
stant's Adolphe and of Senancour's Obermann (1804) — that 
" confession monotone et penetrante." Sainte-Beuve and 
Musset also wrote confessional novels, partly modeled on 
Werther. Gbtz von Berlichingen, also by Goethe, is a predeces- 
sor of the Romantic drama; poems like the Erlkonig had some 
influence on the mysterious and fantastic side of Romanticism ; 
while Faust, especially in its sentimental and diabolical aspects, 
deeply impressed the French imagination. Faust was known 
through many versions, the most remarkable of which is the 
translation by Gerard de Nerval. About 1830, there are many 
expressions of an exalted admiration for Goethe, who was 
viewed as the archetype of the man of genius. Schiller is a 
good second, particularly as regards the theater. His his- 
torical dramas, Don Carlos, Wallenstein, etc., undoubtedly 
furnish examples for the Romantic school. The third conspic- 
uous success in France was the Tales of Hoffmann. These were 
admired and imitated, for their fantasy and diablerie, by such 
men as Nodier and Soulie. It was almost entirely the Roman- 
tic side of Germany that was appreciated in France. There 
were two general effects of this influence: German writers gave 
a considerable impulse to the new currents of poetic liberty; 
and their works served less as close models than as sources of 
vigorous inspiration for the French. 

It would be impossible to enumerate all the phases of the 
English influence; four of the capital names must suffice. 
England: Shakespeare furnished much of the argument for 
Shakespeare the chief Romantic manifesto, Hugo's Preface de 
Cromwell, and his treatment of buffoons and crowds underlies 



OSSIAN AND BYRON 523 

Hugo's practice in this respect. The translations by Alfred 
de Vigny, Shylock and Le More de Venise, were the finest ever 
made, and the performance of the latter play marked an epoch in 
the Romantic drama. Dumas pere declares that Hamlet opened 
to him a new dramatic world and that his own historical 
" tableaux " owe much to Shakespeare. Musset's woodland 
fantasies are like delicate echoes of Twelfth Night and As You 
Like It. All of this implies that there had been a thorough re- 
volt against the Voltairian attitude towards Shakespeare. 
Furthermore, two visits of English actors to Paris materially 
assisted in promoting the Shakespearean vogue. 3 

With this was coupled a vogue of a very different character. 
The strange fascination which " Ossian " exerted on the French 
Macpherson's reached its climax in the Napoleonic era. Chateau- 
" Ossian " briand was his herald, and Mme de Stael made him 
the Homer of her North. The discovery that " Ossian " derived 
less from Homer than from Macpherson gradually chilled the 
French, but the legend of the Bard was not yet dispelled for the 
men of 1830. He is still a fixed star in the literary firmament, 
and his nebulous glamour appeals to many amateurs and minor 
poets. Authoresses like Mme de Genlis and Delphine Gay, 
long-haired Romanticists like Boulay-Paty and Jules Lefevre, 
lead the Caledonian through strange mazes and metamorphoses. 
The Ossianic atmosphere penetrates a good deal of Lamartine, 
especially the Premieres Meditations, inducing a tender feeling 
for landscape, mingled with the melancholy attached to earthly 
things. Alfred de Musset also imitates the Bard in several 
poems. Mistiness and sadness, together with the passion for 
the past, are what this generation admired in Ossian. 

Byron is the most important foreign influence upon French Ro- 
manticism. Indeed, by many Byron was regarded as the arch-ro- 
manticist of Europe. His person was made the sub- 
ject of a sinister legend, according to which the poet 
appeared as a murderer and criminal. For French imitators, he 
stood as the representative of Satanic revolt, of grandiose nature, 
of the Orient, of passion ending in cynicism. His works were trans- 
lated in twenty complete editions from 1820 to 1850. The phases 
of his influence begin with Childe Harold, passing through the 

3 More about Shakespeare will be found in Ch. V, below. 



524 THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT 

rebellious individualism of Manfred, Lara and Cain, to end with 
the sensual cynicism of Don Juan. Important critical appre- 
ciations were written quite early by Nodier, Vigny and Hugo. 
Then Byronic enthusiasm was fanned to a white heat by the 
poet's connection with the Grecian cause and by his untimely 
death. The Muse Frangaise " ne peut que chanter et pleurer By- 
ron." Delavigne mingled Byronic and Oriental inspiration in his 
Odes Messeniennes; so did painters like Delacroix and Gericault. 
Many imitators were variously indebted to the Englishman, in- 
cluding the four chief poets of the era. First, Lamartine 
declares a warm personal admiration for him. The poem of 
Desespoir owes much of its power to Manfred, and in L'Homme 
Lamartine tries at once to glorify Byron and to refute his pes- 
simism. " C'est un ange qui a etudie le diable " — even to the 
extent of feebly continuing Childe Harold in Le Dernier peleri- 
nage d'Harold. Hugo feels the influence especially in Les 
Orientates (Mazeppa, etc.) and in some of the melancholy notes 
of the Feuilles d'automne. Vigny imitates Byron in a dozen 
early poems, and his very notion of the philosophic poem, as 
found in Le Deluge for example, is probably Byronic in source. 
Similar echoes are found in the sadder poems of Musset, as well 
as in such of his dreams as express bitterness and revolt. Fi- 
nally, Gautier's Albertus is quite Don Juanesque in character. 
It is plainly the more passionate, the more melancholy and ex- 
cessive aspects of French Romanticism that seek their prototype 
in Byron. 

Sir Walter Scott is the father of the French historical novel as 
regards the picturesque reconstitution of the past. Picturesque- 
ness in description, characterization and dialogue, is 
the triple aspect of the Waverley Novels that carries 
over into France. Scott's diffused influence reached its apogee 
about 1820, when he was universally admired. He harmo- 
nized with the prevailing vogue of local color and of an anti- 
quarian interest in the past. These characteristics are found, 
for instance, in Vigny's Cinq-Mars, together with Scott's ability 
to brush in the political background. Balzac's Chouans shows 
picturesqueness in dialogue and costumes, as well as Scott's 
penetration into epochs and his skill in handling crowds. Meri- 
mee's Charles IX and Hugo's Notre-Dame represent the farther 



ROMANTIC QUALITIES 525 

reaches of the movement. The Waverley Novels likewise pro- 
moted a feeling for the past and a care for characteristic detail 
among such historians as Thierry and Barante. Scott's anti- 
quarianism had a more human appeal than that of Chateau- 
briand. 

It will now appear that there are many aspects to French 
Romanticism and that it is difficult to summarize the great move- 

« ,. A . ment satisfactorily. Its pervasive force may be 

Qualities J ; T ,, . J 

centered around its belief in the expansive power of 

the individual. It emphasizes the particular, where Classicism 
had emphasized the universal. Individual sentiment, passion, 
genius, are the order of the day; hence lyric poetry is the pre- 
dominant form. The individual soul rises high in exaltation or 
it plunges into its own depths with a fresh sense of the mystery 
of existence; or it goes roaming far from actuality, seeking re- 
moteness in place or time. Associated then with the emotional 
development of the ego are such major Romantic qualities as 
idealism, melancholy, liberalism, exoticism and medievalism, 
together with an expansive treatment of nature and life. Ex- 
amining these, we find that idealism, which begins as " en- 
thusiasm," is not characteristic of the whole movement and is 
best illustrated by Lamartine and certain phases of Vigny and 
Hugo. Many Romanticists are prone to melancholy, due to the 
failure of their too personal or conflicting ideals. Liberalism 
was prominent in the political current; it is also found in the 
literary revolt against Classical subjects, styles and rules; it 
is connected with the spirit of adventure and personal freedom. 
How natural for the Romanticist to go far afield for material, 
to invade the Middle Ages and many distant lands! Hence his 
predilection for splendid scenery, for local color and the pic- 
turesque. Finally, the school expands the Classical conception 
of the world, to include not only the beautiful but also the 
" grotesque " and the characteristic ; not so much the abstract 
and universal as the concrete and diversified. The whole ap- 
proach to art is now through the senses and imagination rather 
than through the reason. As regards form, these various tend- 
encies appear in a considerable enlargement of the language, 
admitting specific and colorful terms, in a greater variety of 
styles, in an anti-classical belief in the " melange des genres." 



526 THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT 

That is, comedy and tragedy may be woven together, and lyri- 
cism dominates even in drama and fiction. Contrary to the eight- 
eenth century, the emphasis is now less on ideas than on artistic 
inspiration and processes; a change that will be reflected in our 
subsequent treatment. 



CHAPTER II 

IMMEDIATE PREDECESSORS: NODIER, 
BERANGER, LAMARTINE 

It has been seen that Charles Nodier (1780-1844) was very 
susceptible to foreign influences and that he served as a leader 
and enthusiastic comrade of one Romantic group. 
Sainte-Beuve considers him the type of the generally 
productive man of letters, who lacked concentration: " Philo- 
logue ici, romanesque la, bibliographe et Wertherien, academique 
et . . . excentrique." Nodier also reflects the stormy uncer- 
tainty of his political epoch. He was born at Besangon, edu- 
cated privately, and went up to Paris for a literary career. But 
the key-note of his character was a revolutionary Romanticism, 
and his anti-Napoleonic manifestations soon caused the author- 
ities to banish him to Switzerland and the Jura, where he was 
" interned " for a number of years. He there developed a taste 
for nature-studies and philology. Travels in Italy and Illyria 
completed his literary baggage. He returned to France just in 
time for the tempests of 1814-15, wrote as journalist under the 
Restoration, and finally settled down as librarian at the Biblio- 
theque de l'Arsenal in 1824. Here his talent mellowed, his ami- 
ability furthered his reputation, and he was elected to the Acad- 
emy before his death. 

Nodier wrote some charming poetry and some adequate criti- 
cism, but the only surviving portion of his work consists of 
His Stories ta ^ es *^ a * cur iously mingle sentiment and fancy. 
They are laid in remote and romanesque places, they 
have strong touches of diablerie and superstition, they contain 
Wertherean melancholy, desperate deaths, anti-social sentiments, 
brigands, fairies, various kinds of madness, mystery and vam- 
pires. His earlier works (Le Peintre de Saltzbourg and Les Pros- 
crits) are mainly sentimental and doleful. The later stories 
show his adventurous imagination and emphasize the fantastic, 

527 



528 NODIER, BERANGER, LAMARTINE 

an element which, following Hoffmann, Nodier acclimatized in 
France. The two Illyrian productions, Jean Sbogar (1818) and 
Smarra (1820), present respectively a mysterious bandit and 
the legend of a vampire. They belong to what Nodier himself 
styled the frantic school (" l'ecole frenetique ") . Trilby, which 
probably furnished the title for Du Maurier's novel, is one of 
Nodier's most finished and delightful stories. It concerns a 
goblin or lutin who befriends and bewilders a Scotch maiden. 
Therese Aubert recalls the days of youthful sentiment, but in 
a more mature and truly moving fashion. Some of Nodier's 
best writing was done in his calmer maturity; he was always 
a master of a certain kind of style, composed of flexible charm- 
ing sentences and a graceful fancy. He is not strong on char- 
acters or composition. He is thoroughly Romantic in sources, 
subjects and temperament. 

Jean-Pierre de Beranger (1780-1857), of bourgeois parentage 
and habits, belonged to no literary group. He was a chansonnier 

- and he remains the most notable composer of French 

Beranger . 

popular songs. In 1813 the epicurean poet, De- 

saugiers, led Beranger to a certain caveau or " Rhymers' Club," 
where the newcomer sang and was well received. His topical 
and political songs soon had a wide vogue; he is considered to 
have " enfranchised " the chanson in 1817 with his Dieu des 
bonnes gens. Beranger was always close to the popular heart 
and from now on he aided in promoting the cult of Napoleon 
among the people. He was prosecuted twice for sedition. Aside 
from that, Beranger always modestly refused public recognition 
and led a retiring life. In his old age, his company was valued 
by such men as Chateaubriand and Lamartine. His excessive 
prestige in his own era was followed by a strong critical re- 
action. But he must be credited with having conferred upon 
the chanson all the literary value of which it seems capable. 

Beranger wrote at least three different kinds of songs. He 
began with the old gaulois type, free, gay and bacchanalian. 
Kinds of This was the kind affected by Desaugiers, who re- 
Chansons mained superior to his disciple in gaiety and ease. 
In Beranger, the epicurean manner seems artificial, though he 
possesses wit and a certain gallant swing. This style may be 
illustrated by he Roi d'Yvetot: 



BERANGER'S MUSE 529 

II etait un roi d'Yvetot 

Peu connu dans l'histoire, 
Se levant tard, se couchant tot, 

Dormant fort bien sans gloire, 
Et couronne par Jeanneton 
D'un simple bonnet de coton, 
Dit-on . . . 

Beranger really finds himself in the second kind of chanson, 
where he indulges the liberal and patriotic vein. Barring ephem- 
eral and occasional pieces, the best products of this period 
are those where the larger popular sentiments and questions are 
treated — such as Napoleon or the " principles of '89 " — and 
no discrepancy was felt between the two ideals, since they both 
tended to the glory of France. The third division consists of 
the songs of Beranger's old age, which are often of a personal 
or sentimental cast, exemplified by Ma Canne or L' Adieu. Some 
irony, more of fantasy and revery characterize these last songs, 
which are often wholly delightful. 

Along with much that is commonplace, Beranger has the in- 
stinct for reflecting the human currents and feelings of his 
Beranger's period. His muse is essentially patriotic or senti- 
Quahties mental. His form is usually simple and direct, 
though sometimes the exigencies of the stanza forced him into 
obscurities and awkward turns of expression. The new Roman- 
ticism did not affect him greatly; his verses are neo-classical, 
if anything. It should be remembered that they were intended 
primarily to be sung, and the sweep of the rhythm, mounting up 
to a well-chosen and memorable refrain, may thus disguise a 
certain literary poverty. The sentimental manner may be 
illustrated by 

Sois-moi fidele, 6 pauvre habit que j'aime; 

the clever refrain by that of Le Juif errant: 

Toujours, toujours, 
Tourne la terre ou moi je cours; 

and political satire by the refrain: 

Chapeau bas! chapeau bas! 
Gloire au marquis de Carabas! 



530 NODIER, BERANGER, LAMARTINE 

The case of Alphonse de Lamartine (1790-1869) is quite 
different. His name authentically opens the succession of 
L m rtin g rea ^ Romantic poets. To his noble and charming 
figure is attached the triple prestige of poet, idealist 
and statesman. He was of a versatile, sensitive and thoroughly 
aristocratic nature. Born at Macon, of an excellent patriarchal 
family, he always clung with a " natural piety " to his early 
associations. His sensibility and Rousseauistic readings made 
him a prey to melancholy in his adolescence. This tendency 
was increased by his unfortunate love-affair with Mme Julie 
Charles, who became the " Elvire " of Lamartine's inspiration. 
What saddened the man deepened and purified the poet. The 
publication of Les Premieres Meditations (1820) was an event; 
the work attracted the attention of Talleyrand, and Lamartine 
was appointed as secretary to the embassy at Naples. 

Even in his troubled youth, Lamartine had strong political 
ambitions. After serving at Naples and at Florence, he wished 
to play a greater role at home, and stood for elec- 
tion as deputy. Defeated at first, he was elected 
in 1831, and this date is a turning-point in his career. Return- 
ing from the Orient, he issued a manifesto which announced a 
progressive and liberal policy. Then he took his seat as an 
independent and maintained a position of isolation for ten 
years, during which period he perfected himself as an orator. 
In 1840, distrustful of the bourgeois ministry, Lamartine came 
out in the Opposition, declaring frankly his belief in the 
Revolution of 1789. Eight years later he was the leading figure 
in another revolution, which he animated by many democratic 
speeches as well as by his glowing and inaccurate Histoire des 
Girondins. When another Saint-Antoine swept into the Hotel 
de Ville in February, 1848, it was Lamartine who time after 
time restrained the mob by his commanding presence, his 
courage and his adroit oratory. Adored by the populace, he 
reached his zenith as minister of foreign affairs and virtually 
as head of the Provisional Government. Yet in a few months 
he had lost all his prestige and in the presidential election the 
fickle people turned from him to the rising star which bore the 
magic name of Bonaparte. When Bonaparte perpetrated his 
Coup d'Etat and became Napoleon III, Lamartine was sub- 



THE SOURCES OF LAMARTINE 531 

merged politically. After all his triumphs, he spent an old age 
of semi-poverty and literary hack-work. He was not a prac- 
tical politician; in politics as in other matters he remained the 
idealist. There, too, he sowed the seeds of fine thought and 
feeling, some of which have flowered in modern democratic 
France. Yet in spite of his statesmanship and his powers of 
eloquence, the real enduring contribution of Lamartine was 
made to French poetry. 

The three forces which dominated Lamartine's early life and 
which constitute the chief inspiration of his poems were nature, 
His religion and woman ; it may be added that the three 

Inspiration are c i sely associated in his greatest verse. Le 
Crucifix, for instance, in which the beloved emblem passes from 
the dying to the living, is in memory of the ethereal Elvire, and 
in Le Temple the poet mingles sacred and profane love. Again, 
his sweethearts are linked with their background in nature. So 
the bright figure of Graziella, the Italian maiden, is duly por- 
trayed against the brilliant Neapolitan scenery; and the pale 
shade of Elvire haunts immortally the placid Lac du Bourget. 
The typical Lamartinian landscape is formed by certain elements 
which stand almost as symbols of love and revery: the lake, 
the twilight hour, the stealing moonbeam, the gentle slopes, the 
tall sad trees. Finally, nature and God, "le roi de la nature," 
are made one in many Pantheistic poems, especially from Les 
Harmonies. Lamartine's faith is not strictly orthodox. It par- 
takes of a vague religiosity and it concerns itself, none too 
deeply, with the usual philosophical problems; but it expresses 
a constant idealism. 

Les Premieres Meditations (1820) mark the beginning of 
nineteenth- century poetry. As M. Lanson has demonstrated, 
His Works ^ nese lyrics usually have bookish sources (Petrarch, 
Rousseau, the Bible) and in form they show a 
continuity with neo-classical tradition rather than a distinct 
break. Their tremendous vogue was due primarily to the inti- 
macy, the purity and plaintive sincerity of Lamartine's indi- 
vidual voice, which, like that of Rousseau, restored the ring x)f 
great emotion to literature. Hence the immediate effect of the 
volume on the tender-hearted. In spite of the fading in- 
fluence of time, Lamartine's best stanzas still lie embedded, like 



532 NODIER, BERANGER, LAMARTINE 

perfect crystals, in the memories of many readers. Such are 
the verses of L'Isolement: 

Fleuves, rochers, forets, solitudes si cheres, 
Un seul etre vous manque et tout est depeuple. 

Such is the picture of UAutomne: 

Salut, bois couronne d'un reste de verdure. . . . 

And such the beauty of Le Lac, which perpetuates the memory 
of Elvire in one of the most famous and sorrowful love-songs 
in the language: 

Que le vent qui gemit, le roseau qui soupire, 
Que les parfums Jegers de ton air embaume, 
Que tout ce qu'on entend, Ton voit ou Ton respire, 
Tout dise : "lis ont aime ! " 

Nothing that characterizes Lamartine is absent from this first 
volume. Les Nouvelles Meditations (1823), published after his 
marriage to an Englishwoman, partially substitute for the old 
melancholy a happy love in a sunny landscape; otherwise they 
prolong the moods and measures of the first collection and have 
suffered to some extent the common fate of a sequel. Sainte- 
Beuve says of the second Meditations that they constitute a less 
artistic whole, though several individual pieces show a more 
sustained breadth and inspiration. The first series has more 
spontaneity, the second more finish. Among the best-known 
lyrics here may be mentioned: Le Crucifix (to Elvire) ; the 
sensuous beauty of Ischia and Chant d' Amour (to his wife) ; 
Les Preludes and Bonaparte (reflective poems). When .La- 
martine published Les Harmonies poetiques et religieuses 
(1830), the audience had grown accustomed to the poet's voice. 
Here he sings mainly of religion, through hymns and prayers, 
cantatas and invocations. He frequently strikes a bold and 
rich note — which he is tempted to hold too long. This tendency 
towards length leads to an increased use of varied rhythms in 
the same poem. The easy flow sometimes becomes too easy and 
the memorable effects are fewer in proportion. But there are 
half-a-dozen unforgotten poems, including the Hymne de l' en- 
fant (naive childish faith), U Occident (solemn and superb 



LAMARTINE'S POETIC TRAITS 533 

Pantheism), the despairing confession of Novissima verba and 
above all the tribute to Graziella in Le Premier Regret: 

Mais pourquoi m'entrainer vers ces scenes passees? 

Laissons le vent gemir et le flot murmurer; 

Revenez, revenez, 6 mes tristes pensees! 
Je veux rever et non pleurer. 

i 
After writing this volume, Lamartine turned to politics, and his 
succeeding publications (for instance, Les Recueillements and 
the prose romance of Graziella) are not so significant. An ex- 
ception must be made for Jocelyn (1836). This long narrative 
poem concerns the frustrated loves of a priest and his com- 
panion. It is remarkable for two things: a deeper philosophy 
than is customary with Lamartine and a splendid treatment of 
nature in the episode of Les Laboureurs. The conception of 
Jocelyn, as of La Chute d'un ange (1838), is often epic and 
symbolical in effect, reminding one of Alfred de Vigny (see 
Ch. IV, below). 

The technical qualities of Lamartine's poetry are, first, a 
suave harmony, continuing the tradition of Racine and of the 
His eighteenth- century elegists; a fluidity of composi- 

Qualities ^ on? connected with a preference for floating, soar- 
ing objects and images; a softness of tone and outline; and an 
exposed sensibility, like that of " an iEolian harp." Moreover, 
his poetry is subjective to a degree unknown in French poetry 
since the Pleiade. In form, Lamartine stands less for elaborate 
workmanship than for improvisation and spontaneity. He did 
not despise revision, but he needed restriction. His poems tend 
progressively towards a full easy movement, lacking definiteness 
of contour and containing sometimes negligences and bombast. 
Often too his muse has an airy insubstantiality, like that of 
Shelley. But it is seldom that Lamartine fails to affect the 
reader by the expansive grace of his emotions and the lifting 
power of his ideals. 



CHAPTER III 
THE POETS: VICTOR HUGO 

As Voltaire dominated the eighteenth century, so does Hugo 
dominate the nineteenth, and partly for the same reasons: ver- 
His Rank satility, longevity (1802-85) and the power of an 
ever-driving pen. Not only is Hugo the most repre- 
sentative writer of the past century; he is the greatest lyric 
poet that France ever had, and he possesses one of the master 
imaginations of the world. The French are proud of him, not 
so much as the author of Les Miser ables or of Hernani, but be- 
cause in the writing of poetry he shows amazing powers of 
vision and expression. But his judgment and balance fall be- 
low his creative abilities, and the man is inferior to the poet. 
The facts of his life and work must be distinguished from the 
" legend," which he and his admirers carefully fostered. 

Victor-Marie Hugo was born at Besangon in 1802. His 
father was an officer in Napoleon's army and commanded under 
v Joseph Bonaparte when the latter was made king 

of Spain. General Hugo took his family with him, 
and Victor's boyish eyes were rilled with the picturesqueness 
of Italy, the light and splendor of Spain. The latter country 
left its impress upon many of his works (for example, Hernani, 
La Legende des siecles). The Hugo family settled at Paris in 
1812, and Victor went in for omnivorous study and much juve- 
nile verse-making. At the age of fourteen he declared: " Je veux 
etre Chateaubriand ou rien." The youthful poet failed of the 
prize in several Academy competitions, but was later crowned 
by the Jeux Floraux de Toulouse. He and his brother estab- 
lished a journal — Le Conservateur litteraire, (1819-21) — for 
which Victor wrote voluminously. The journal was well named, 
for at this period Hugo was conservative in everything, pre- 
ferring the consecrated literary tradition and manifesting, a la 
Chateaubriand, an ardent royalism and Catholicism. These 

534 



HIS LIFE 535 

were also the principles of the Societe des Bonnes Lettres, which 
Victor joined a little later. After his mother's death, a period 
of discouragement and loneliness propelled Hugo into a swift 
marriage with the beautiful Adele Foucher. Marital responsi- 
bilities hastened his productivity and he brought out the first 
volume of Odes et Ballades (1822). This publication launched 
him on his career, talented young friends were grouped around 
him, and the cenacle of the Muse Frangaise was formed with 
Hugo's active collaboration. The youth already impressed 
these coteries by his grave and priest-like demeanor and by the 
promise of his genius. 

The year 1827 may be regarded as marking Hugo's maturity 
and his conversion to Romanticism. This year saw the publi- 
cation of Cromwell and its preface ; the poet assumed 
the leadership of the chief Romantic cenacle; and his 
intimate friendship and literary association with Sainte-Beuve 
was started. In 1830, he is at the height of his young glory, with 
the victory of Hernani, and for ten years thereafter he wields a 
literary scepter. In this decade numerous plays were performed, 
four important volumes of verse were published, together 
with the very successful Notre-Dame de Paris; and Hugo was 
gradually converted to a cautious republicanism. His popularity 
was increased through his expression of democracy (for example, 
in Ruy Bias), as well as through his exaltation of Napoleon, and 
fresh coteries surrounded him with dangerous incense. After 
several applications, he was elected to the Academy in 1841. 
He suffered a great domestic bereavement through the drowning 
of his daughter in 1841; he had already broken with Sainte- 
Beuve for private reasons. He assumed a more prominent role 
politically, and in 1848 he declared for republicanism against 
Bonaparte. His opposition to the latter led to Hugo's exile and 
caused an inextinguishable hatred for " Napoleon le petit." 
The poet was banished first to Brussels, then took up his resi- 
dence on the Channel Islands, Jersey and Guernsey (1852-70). 
His life in exile was characterized by virulent attacks on Napo- 
leon III (Les Chdtiments) and on other French leaders; by an 
acquaintance with new landscapes and seascapes, which are 
prominent in Les Travailleurs de la mer; and by an unceasing 
literary productivity, which finds its crown in La Legende des 



536 THE POETS: VICTOR HUGO 

siecles. Returning to Paris in 1870, Hugo went through the 
siege and reconstruction, and wrote UAnnee terrible. He was 
now a " grand vieillard," who posed in his salon as a demi-god. 
His last years were filled with a great and growing popularity. 
France saw in him a hero and prophet who had experienced 
and reflected her own vicissitudes and who now shed glory on 
the Republic. In 1875 he was elected senator from Paris; he 
was feted widely on his eightieth birthday, and his death in 
1885 was made the occasion of an apotheosis. His ashes were 
laid in the Pantheon amid much pomp and almost universal 
tribute. 

In many respects Hugo deserved his fame. He was an authen- 
tic genius and an indefatigable worker. His best writings are 
marked by a great imaginative flame and by an un- 
derstanding of the heart of humanity. But in his 
own, life his heart and his judgment likewise were often sub- 
merged by his ego. Friends fell away from him, women suffered 
from his treatment, no cause could reckon on his support, if his 
pride or prestige was at stake. His inordinate vanity has been 
made the subject of many stories; he actually thought that the 
city of Paris should be renamed in his honor. He loved his 
country and especially his children; but love, literature and 
politics became with Hugo occasions for self-aggrandizement, 
and because of his political veering, the charge has been made 
that he lacked sincerity both in his life and his works. This 
is probably too severe, but steadfastness of thought and conduct 
are scarcely to be expected from Hugo's whirling brain and 
imagination. He is an echo of ideas rather than an originator. 
He is not to be greatly loved or trusted, but rather to be admired 
when properly set on his pedestal. That pedestal consists of 
nearly fifty volumes, many of which are masterpieces. We shall 
consider only his poetry in this chapter. 1 The lyrical inspiration 
with which Hugo began predominated for twenty years and is 
also conspicuous in his drama during that period. 

The volumes of Odes (1822-24) and later of Odes et ballades 
_,. _ . (1826) are far from indicating the true power of 
Hugo. The odes particularly seem second-rate to- 
day in their effete royalism and neo-classicism. These occasional 

1 For his drama and fiction, see below, Chapters V and VI. 



HIS VERSE 537 

pieces are full of apostrophies and banalities. The ballads are 
better poetry, and such a chivalric inspiration as Le Pas d'armes 
du roi Jean, with its skilful swing, announces the author as a vir- 
tuoso of rime and rhythm. These qualities and others are con- 
spicuous in Les Orientales (1829) , w r here Hugo's muse is decidedly 
stronger. Deference is shown to the Byronic vogue, and certain 
poems dealing with Greece and Turkey have a conventional 
flavor ; but those dealing with Spain have kept all their freshness 
of coloring; in fact, splendid color is the hall-mark of Les 
Orientales. The volume includes such a tour de force as Les 
Djinns and the reworking of Byron's Mazeppa, with the fine 
symbol of the poet bound to his genius as Mazeppa was bound to 
his horse. Great suppleness of rhythm and language are to be 
found in Les Orientales, of which one critic has said, " On est 
ebloui, mais on n'est pas emu." 

More emotion appears in the four volumes of the next decade. . 
The poet now turns to subjective experience. Also, profiting by 
Mature the advice of Sainte-Beuve, Hugo seems to reveal a 

Personal better taste and less tendency to excess than in any 
other period. This is certainly true of Les Feuilles 
d'automne (1831) , where the treatment is subdued and the themes 
are personal or concerned with hearth and home. But the poet 
loses in eclat what he gains in sobriety. The " twilight " note of 
the Chants du crepuscule (1835) indicates more melancholy and 
pensive doubt than is found elsewhere; but there is too much 
" occasional verse " on very different subjects. Consequently 
the volume lacks unity. It is noticeable that here Hugo seems 
less captivated by kings and shows the beginnings of his human- 
itarian sentiments. His religion had died down. In fact, no 
great convictions inspire Les Chants du crepuscule, though the 
form is often powerful or graceful. Les Voix interieures (1837) 
set out to express " cette musique que tout homme a en soi," 
and the personal voices often mingle with those of Nature at 
large. There are echoes of her moods, whether compassionate 
or indifferent, the sound of the sea is heard, and nature and art 
are prettily compounded in such charming poems as Le Passe 
or Puisqu'ici-bas toute ame. The volume is an admirable lyric 
collection. Finally, Les Rayons et les Ombres (1840), in its 
alternation of happiness and sorrow, also contains many notable 



538 THE POETS: VICTOR HUGO 

poems. There is the famous Guitare, with its refrain, 

Le vent qui souffle a travers la montagne 
Me rendra fou! 

There is the mournful splendor of Oceano Nox and another 
mingling of art and nature in La Statue. Above all, there is 
Hugo's greatest poem of sentiment, that " pathetic sonata " 
called Tristesse d'Olympio. The theme of this, as in La- 
martine's Lac and Musset's Souvenir, is the revival of love's 
memory amid associated scenery, and Hugo's solution is that 
the memory is not preserved in external objects but lives dark- 
ling in the human heart — 

C'est toi qui dors dans l'ombre, 6 sacre souvenir. 

In general, nature is viewed as linked with our emotions and 
as an educator of humanity. The volume sums up several 
of the author's previous tendencies, such as the depiction of 
family life or of landscape, and announces coming tendencies, 
such as compassionate humanitarianism and satiric indignation. 
Les Chdtiments (1853) fulfil Hugo's declaration — 

Et j'ajoute a ma lyre une corde d'airain. 

Written during exile, the book is one long-sustained invective 
against Napoleon III. On account of its unity, vehemence and 
biting force, this is regarded by many as Hugo's 
greatest volume of verse. That distinction should 
rather be reserved for La Legende des siecles, but it is true that 
Les Chdtiments " enlarge the limits of poetry " and bring into 
satire a new ardor and imagery. We have here less virtuosity and 
more direct emotion than is usual with Hugo, because his hatred 
of the third Napoleon was probably the master-feeling of his 
public life. Les Chdtiments present a constant antithesis be- 
tween the night of the past (usurpations, crime and the degra- 
dation of races) and the light of the future (expiation, the 
restoration of justice, the triumph of human love and of the 
powers of nature). Much of this appears in L' Expiation, the 
best-known poem in the collection. Its moral is that the great 
and Napoleon's ruthlessness is punished less by his own 

Meditations defeats than by the nullity of his successor. This 
poem contains some of the finest tirades in the language. Les 



HIS MASTERPIECE 539 

Contemplations (1856) are more serene and constitute a sort 

of long autobiography. Hugo has now assumed his role of 

songeur or seer. He " contemplates " nature {Pasteurs et 

troupeaux), meditates on death, particularly the loss of his 

daughter, reflects on his own past and still hates his enemies. 

All his lyric gifts are here in full force and certain of his lyric 

extravagances: an abuse of enumeration and repetition, a flux 

of words, or a tendency towards a mere coquettish prettiness 

(mignardises, cf. Rostand's Musardises). But his power of 

apocalyptic vision makes the second part of the volume 

resemble a darker Revelation of St. John. This soaring 

away from the known earth into realms of hallucination and 

immensity is Hugo's greatest feat in La Legende des siecles. 

That collection consisted of four volumes, ranging from 

1859 to 1883. The earlier volumes are superior to the later. 

Epic: "La The ^ erm " petites epopees" was used as a sub- 

Legende des title, and the whole work proceeded from the epic 
siecles » 

conception of recording the destinies of mankind at 

various periods and as expressed by various heroes. Vigny had 
already poetized this idea, which was carried on by Hugo, by 
the work of Leconte de Lisle and by Heredia's Trophies. 2 Apart 
from the conception, however, Hugo's manner is epic in only a 
few narratives (Eviradnus, Ratbert, etc.) and includes poems of 
all sorts and sizes. In his survey of the ages, the author shows 
a preference for remote and god-like periods, and his apocalyptic 
genius appears riding above the chaos of pre-historic times. 
The beginnings of creation (Le Sacre de la femme, La Con- 
science) ; the warfare of Titans and gods (Le Titan, Le Geant 
qux dieux) ; a superb Naturalistic vision of Pan and his like 
{Le Satyr e) ; the heroics of Roland and of the Cid: these are 
the subjects that attracted Hugo, who felt an affinity for the 
gigantic and even the monstrous. He also well portrayed 
Biblical times, as in the charming idyll of Booz endormi; and 
the ideals of chivalry still stirred him, as in Aymerillot and 
Eviradnus. But more civilized aspects of culture, such as Grecian 
beauty or the modern refinement of France, scarcely inspired 
him at all. Consequently, La Legende des siecles shows great 
gaps from the historical point of view. Again, Hugo's treatment 

8 See below, Bk. VII, Ch. III. 



540 THE POETS: VICTOR HUGO 

of history was too simplified in that he saw a clear conflict be- 
tween good and evil, a perpetual antithesis of " Dieu " and 
" Satan." Kings are always odious and tyrannous, whereas 
democracy {le peuple) shall be released and justified. Hope is 
the vision which shines above the crumbling " wall of the cen- 
turies." Hugo, for poetical purposes, puts " legend " side by 
side with history and violates accuracy at will ; but the historical 
coloring is often superb, vivid reconstruction is attained in many 
places, the symbols are usually well-chosen, and, above all, the 
powers of expression here revealed are unrivaled and almost 
inhuman. The poet creates his own mythology in his dealings 
with Titans and giants and in the marvelous Satyr e. A 
sinister beauty and a strange force predominate in the work 
{L'Aigle du Casque, Le Parricide) ; there is an alternation of the 
ideal with the brutal (UEpopee du ver) ; magnificent invective 
shines in La Vision de Dante, and a more restrained Renaissance 
beauty in La Rose de VInjante. Sometimes there are violences 
and absurdities, as in the notion of the Sultan who achieves re- 
demption through succoring a pig. Kings, monsters, children, 
gods, animals, criminals and the abounding personality of the 
author make the strangest jumble. More and more Hugo dons 
the mantle of the prophet and lays down the law to humanity 
(cf . La Fonction du poete) . The thought is often commonplace or 
empty, yet it has been said that the hollowest verses are formed 
so solidly that they stand upright like richly wrought armor. 
The composition of individual poems is excellent. Hugo can 
do anything with rhythm, while in language and in metaphor he 
opens new horizons. His greatest gifts of imagination and 
rhetoric are here revealed in their perfection and even in their 
over-perfection and excess. 3 

His imagination declares itself in many ways: in the actual 
number and novelty of his images; in his power of sustained 
, . .. personification and vision; and particularly in his 
myth-making faculty, his evocation of immensity. 
In the first place, his images are often striking, novel or freshly 
adapted ; they are sometimes ugly and they are incessant. Hugo 

3 La Ligende is Hugo's culminating work, but for the sake of completeness there 
may be mentioned: Chansons des rues et des bois (1865), V Art d'etre grand' 'pere 
(1877) and Les Quatre Vents de V 'esprit (1881). 



HIS IMAGINATION 541 

simply saw the world in terms of the imagination, and he has 
been called " next to Chateaubriand . . . the great imagist " of 
French literature (Babbitt). So we find long successions of 
figures, the intention being to compare the object to as many 
other objects as possible. This sometimes leads to a welter of 
mixed figures, as where Dante is compared first to a mountain, 
then to an oak and finally to a lion. But at his best Hugo pre- 
sents hundreds of suitable poetic images, consisting mainly of 
similes and metaphors. His figures are of the greatest variety, 
realistic, spiritual, tragic and terrible, or simply charming. The 
second feature of his imaginative ability is the gift of sustained 
personification or amplification. This appears in his vision of 
the Wall (" le mur des siecles ") , or in such a poem as Mazeppa, 
where we find a long and appropriate succession of images 
within the main simile. Bold metamorphoses and many personi- 
fications of general ideas (le Peuple, le Vers, VIdee) also occur. 
There is the recurrent personification of I'Echafaud, like the 
sustained vivification and symbolism of Notre-Dame. Finally, 
his creative myth-making has already been exemplified in con- 
nection with La Legende — a new angle of Olympus, a bold en- 
trance of titanic forces, together with the Zodiac, the Word and a 
comprehensive person called Tout. Hugo constructs fresh 
figures in " la Deroute " and " les Batailles " of Napoleon. He 
shows a kind of animism in treating elements as living, thinking 
forces: " La mer fait des maladresses." Oceans and wars, 
demi-gods and centuries parade before us, and Hugo's highest 
visioning does not fall short of sublimity. 

To illustrate this power of sublime conception, we may take 
the poem called Le Parricide. King Canute of Denmark 
has killed his own father. The crime is not discovered, but 
Canute dies, rises again in his restlessness, wraps himself in a 
shroud of snow and goes roaming in search of God. Wherever 
he goes, throughout a strange universe, " a drop of blood falls 
upon his shroud." This is the recurrent motif, like the constant 
snow in L' Expiation. The shroud soon becomes wholly crimson, 
and Canute in an agony of remorse is driven from the throne 
of God. 

A like sublimity marks Hugo's language at its best. He is 
the greatest master of poetic style and knows all the resources 



542 THE POETS: VICTOR HUGO 

of French rhetoric. His language is nearly always grammatical 

and syntactical; his faults proceed rather from too much style 

and too much imagination. He had the widest 

range in vocabulary of any French poet, totally 

outsoaring the Classical restrictions. He adored words: 

Car le mot, c'est le Verbe et le Verbe c'est Dieu. 

Above all, he had a preference for the grandiose: for such words 
as immense, sombre, vaste, for such figures as lions, titans and 
the seven wonders of the world. The gigantic runs readily into 
the grotesque, and the grotesque into the goguenard (Le Geant 
aux dieux) . He also gives a large place to the purely fantastic. 
On the other hand, he does not always eschew mere prettiness 
and wit. Among his prominent rhetorical devices are the 
following: the double substantive [Vhomme-troupeau, la reine- 
esclave) ; the recurrent motif, such as the Eye that ever watches 
Cain in La Conscience; and long enumerations or parallel clauses 
beginning with the same word. This last habit, effective at first, 
grew upon Hugo until it became a fault of his method, leading 
to many repetitions and excrescences. But his inveterate trait, 
equally dangerous, is antithesis, the psychological results of 
which will be developed elsewhere. Here it may be exemplified 
by the title of Les Rayons et les Ombres or by the fine Alexan- 
drine from Booz endormi: 

Car le jeune homme est beau, mais le vieillard est grand. 

Harmless and even appropriate in many cases, this kind of 
balance became an obsession with Hugo, leading to monotony 
and, often, to a twisting of the truth. Another device, more typ- 
ically French, is the long periode, the sustained sweep of sen- 
tences in which the effective line or word comes last. This has 
analogies with the " surprise ending " of Maupassant and may 
be found in Bivar, Tristesse d'Olympio (see above) and several 
speeches from Hernani, ending in " l'echafaud." In the matter 
of sonority and tone-color, Hugo is unsurpassed. Witness the 
vibrant note, the clashing of dollars and drums in Les Reitres: 

Sonnez, clairons, sonnez, cymbales! 
On entendra siffler les balles. . . . 
Sonnez, rixdales, sonnez, doublons! 



HIS GENIUS 543 

Or again, the sinister noise of the yew-trees crushed by the 
genii (Les Djinns) : 

Les ifs que leur vol fracasse 
Craquent comme un pin brulant. 

As regards structure, Hugo is a master of exact, harmonious 
and beautiful composition, whose regularity he knows how to 
vary at need. Finally, his verse-rhythms show an equal variety 
and freedom. 4 

It has been seen that Hugo runs to excess ; he has the defects 
of his qualities. But the qualities outweigh the defects — a 
. truth which hostile critics hardly consider — and 
there are dozens of masterpieces in which the 
artist displays an almost Classic beauty and restraint. Other 
of his poetic virtues might be mentioned, such as his sensibility 
and his power of suggestiveness. Through the universality of 
his genius he exemplifies, indeed, nearly every mode and quality 
of Romanticism. But rhetoric and imagination are his special 
forte. His thought lacks depth and coherency: his Naturalism 
wars with his more orthodox faith in God, in immortality and in 
the spirit of mankind. His expansive poetic power is the gift 
that remains unassailable. This gift has influenced and often 
transported two generations, at home and abroad. Other poets 
may do this or that, said Theodore de Banville, but, he added, 
referring to Hugo's Guernsey sojourn, 

The Master's yonder in the Isle. 

And in England, Swinburne was one of Hugo's greatest admirers 
and imitators. 

4 For the Romantic liberation of the Alexandrine, see below, Ch. V. 



CHAPTER IV 
THE POETS: MUSSET, VIGNY, GAUTIER 

Of these three writers, Musset is the most passionate, Vigny 
the most intellectual, and Gautier the most elaborate and sensu- 
ous. Alfred de Musset expresses the direct emotions of love and 
youth; Alfred de Vigny fathers the " poeme philosophique " ; 
Theophile Gautier begins a tendency towards impersonality and 
incorporates in his work the doctrine of art for art's sake. 

The chief event in Alfred de Musset 's life (1810-57) was his 
love-affair with George Sand. As a youth of eighteen he had 
been the enfant terrible of Hugo's group, and his 
early poems show a mingling of Byronic passion with 
adolescent gaiety and daring. The trip to Italy with George 
Sand (1833) effectively disposed of the gaiety, and the two 
writers failed in their signal attempt to carry the Romantic theo- 
ries into love and life. Their rupture left the stronger nature 
of the woman almost unharmed, but Musset sank into despair 
and debauchery, a night relieved only by the composition of a 
few great poems that immortalize his sorrow. He produced very 
little during the last ten years of his life. " Que de lumiere!" ex- 
claims Sainte-Beuve, " que d'eclipse et d'ombre! " 

Musset's poems are to be found today in the two collections of 
Premieres poesies (to 1833) and Poesies nouvelles (1836-52). 
Chief They range from the youthful abandon of his first 

Volumes volume (Contes d'Espagne et d'ltalie, 1829) , through 
the cynic gloom of Rolla, down to the supreme cry of defeated 
passion in the famous Nuits. The prose Confession aVun Enfant 
du siecle also recounts his love and grief. His poetic dramas 
will be considered in the next chapter. The Contes d'Espagne 
et d'ltalie show Romantic exoticism and the " lure of distance," 
Romantic swagger and irony (Don Paez, Mardoche). Though 
inferior as a whole to his later work, this volume contains vari- 
ous charming chansons, which were always a forte with Musset. 

544 



MUSSET'S VERSE 545 

The Contes represent the reckless sparkling dandy that was the 
poet's first incarnation. As for expression, this is the only volume 
that freely takes Romantic liberties (enjambement, etc.), and 
even here Musset parodies certain features of the Romantic 
technique. His break with the school occurred shortly after- 
wards; he rebelled against the rime riche and the rhetorical 
processes of Hugo's circle; but the narrative poems of Namouna 
and Rolla (1833) none the less reflect the exaltation, Don Juan- 
ism and disillusionment so characteristic of the period. Rolla, 
or the " last night of a rake," is Musset's longest narrative poem 
and made his reputation among those who admired Byronic 
effusions. Up to this point Musset is essentially the poet of 
youth, and Sainte-Beuve declared him the embodiment of ado- 
lescent genius. 

He fully became the poet of love in the series always associ- 
ated with his name: the Nuit de mai and the Nuit de decembre 
(1835), which particularly and poignantly recall his heart-affair; 
the Nuit d'aout and the Nuit d'octobre, which are calmer in tone. 
Three of these four lyrics consist of dialogues between the poet 
and his Muse. The latter generally urges recovery from sorrow, 
the healing effects of time and of work. But the poet retorts — 
and this is Musset's outstanding creed: 

Apres avoir souffert, il faut souffrir encore, 
II faut aimer sans cesse, apres avoir aime. 

The Souvenir of 1841 worthily concludes the series in its vehe- 
ment and beautiful expression of the thought that, though love 
may be lost, its memory can never perish. Of these masterpieces, 
La Nuit de mai is the most exquisite lyrically, from the swooning 
beauty of the early, strophes to the great figure of the pelican as 
compared with the poet's heart, Musset's other verse often has 
this lyric charm, especially audible in such songs as Adieu Suzon, 
Rappelle-toi and the Chanson de Barberine: 

Beau chevalier qui partez pour la guerre, 

Qu'allez-vous faire 

Si loin de nous? 
J'en vaia pleurer, moi qui me laissais dire 

Que mon sourire 

Etait si doux. 



546 MUSSET, VIGNY, GAUTIER 

The Stances d la Malibran, in their insistence on the essential 
unity of genius and love, constitute a fine elegy. The 
er oems j^ e ^ re ^ Lamartine pays tribute to that poet's calmer 
idealism, contrasted with the mal romantique of Musset himself. 
Sur la paresse lets the writer, with his usual frankness, tell us a 
great deal about his ideas and his habits: his invincible idleness; 
his hatred of present-day manners, mediocrity, journalism; his 
preference for the gallantry of his ancestors, for living danger- 
ously and expansively; and his love of Regnier as the master 
of virile satire. The poet's spiritual longings are vaguely ex- 
pressed in L'Espoir en Dieu: 

Malgre moi Pinfini me tourmente, 

but elsewhere Musset admits his general indifference to politics 
and religion. His apprehension of such subjects is quick rather 
than profound. He is not a philosopher, not an interpreter of 
mankind nor of nature. He is distinguished by a charming fancy 
rather than by the greater creative imagination. He is at his 
best in " short swallow-flights of song." 

The form of this poetry is not perfect. In versification and 
expression Musset is too often careless or obscure. Yet his style 

~ 1>A . has a natural eloquence. His verse is most distin- 

Quahties . ... 

guished when his emotion is at white heat, and in re- 
belling against the cenacle he declared that feeling is far more 
important than form. His cult of the emotions and senses is 
more refined than Gautier's and more idealistic than Byron's. 
His great merit is that he sings incomparably of the ardors of 
love and the depths of love's despair. His ennui and Byronism 
are compatible with a passionate sincerity; his eloquence and 
harmony are then the direct expression of his feeling; he really 
did desire and strive to make romantic love the greatest thing 
in life. He lives as the chief exponent and victim of this tend- 
ency, which is so marked in his generation. He is also Romantic 
in his frank self-confession, his need for individual expansion 
and exaltation. He is the poet of personality: 

Mon verre n'est pas grand, mais je bois dans mon verre. 

Hence he formed no school and has had no successful imitators. 
Like his hero, Rolla, he displays his bruised heart amid the 






VIGNY'S LIFE 547 

magnificence of nature and of history; yet we feel that these 
trappings are not the essential thing. He reflects the exoticism 
and the medievalism of his epoch — but medieval faith is no 
longer his: 

Je suis venu trop tard dans un monde trop vieux. 

He is capable of witty dialogue and of telling stories in verse 
(Simone, Silvie) — but his best story is his own, as related in 
the Nuits. He appeals most deeply to those whose hearts have 
remained young; yet the sober critic, Taine, concludes his 
Litterature anglaise by an ardent appreciation of Musset. Com- 
paring him to Tennyson, Taine admits that in several respects, 
the English country gentleman was superior to the fevered 
Parisian roue — " mais j'aime mieux Alfred de Musset que 
Tennyson." There are many for whom Musset is still singing 
and who will agree with Taine as to the power and poignancy 
of his lyric cry. 

The poetry of Alfred de Vigny 1 (1797-1863) is more im- 
personal in expression than that of Musset, but it also springs, 
Vigny 's partially at least, from the circumstances of his 

Outer Life i nne r and outer life. That life consisted of a series 
of disappointments. Born of a noble family and believing in 
noblesse oblige in every sense, Vigny realized that nobility was 
at a discount in France. Entering military service he found 
that career unsatisfactory and recorded his experiences in the 
collection of stories called Servitude et grandeur militaires 
(1835). Falling in love with the actress Dorval, he was de- 
ceived by her and gave vent to his bitterness in the poem on 
La Colere de Samson. Attached quite early to two of the 
Romantic cenacles, he lost faith in the movement and broke with 
his former comrades; in Sainte-Beuve's famous phrase: 

Et Vigny, plus secret, 
Comme en sa tour d'ivoire, avant midi rentrait. 2 

He retired, that is, into an intellectual and artistic solitude, and 
emerged only when duty called him. 

1 See also Chs. V and VI, below. 

2 Hence the origin of "the ivory tower" in modern usage; its ancient source 
is the turris eburnea of the Vulgate. 






548 MUSSET, VIGNY, GAUTIER 

Vigny is then the poet of the inner life. His thought re- 
volves around certain fixed ideas, and the idea, in each poem, 
Inner Life is embodied in a concrete imaginative symbol, 
and Symbols j^jg p rocess can be illustrated by the principal 
titles in Vigny's single volume of poetry. 3 In the poem already 
cited, Samson represents the betrayal of man's strength — 

Et plus ou moins la femme est toujours Dalila. 

In Moise, the prophet typifies the loneliness of genius. In La 
Bouteille a la mer, the imperishable idea (" la Science ") is 
symbolized by the message cast overboard in a shipwreck; a 
similar devotion to the Idea is found in L'Esprit pur and La 
Maison du berger. The latter poem suggests, in its title and 
content, a retreat into the bosom of nature. Le Cor symbolizes 
Roland's heroic death, and La Mort du loup teaches silence and 
energy. It is in this fashion that Vigny creates the " poeme," 
which may be defined as a short narrative or idyllic poem ex- 
pressing symbolically a philosophical thought. 

The final divisions of his work correspond partly to his 
favorite reading (the Bible, Homer, Byron) . The " Livre mys- 
tique " includes Moise, Le Deluge and Eloa, that 
story of the angel-maiden who became enamored 
of Lucifer. The " Livre antique " has both a Biblical and a 
Homeric subdivision, and the latter class, by extension, includes 
Vigny's early idylls {La Dryade, etc.) . The " Livre moderne " 
is largely historical and more definitely symbolic: it contains 
Le Cor, Madame de Soubise, etc. The fourth and most im- 
portant division is " Les Destinees," wherein appeared most of 
the poems mentioned in the preceding paragraph. There is a 
certain historical progression in the volume and this, together 
with the emphasis on human deeds and " destinies," the migra- 
tion of the human spirit across the ages, makes Vigny antedate 
the Legende des siecles and Leconte de Lisle. 

The nature of Vigny, proud, sincere, pessimistic and stoical, 

is discreetly revealed in most of his poems; but 

the direct personal confession or complaint is hardly 

found. He generalizes from experience, and his tendency is 

3 One volume holds his entire verse to-day. But he published, in order, 
Poemes, 1822; Eloa, 1824; Poemes antiques et modernes, 1826; there appeared post- 
humously Les Destinies, 1864, and the prose Journal d'un poete, 1867. 



VIGNY'S CREED 549 

towards the abstract. His chief ideas may be now summed 
up. He believes primarily in the power of thought, whether 
as scientific knowledge or as the poet's vision. In the latter 
form, the outer world may serve for symbols, but the inner 
world contains the enduring reality. Vigny's sensibility is 
awakened less by the usual human emotions than by the thrill 
of comprehending and expressing " le Dieu des idees." He can 
trust no other god but this; his pessimism causes him to doubt 
the beneficence of Providence and the effective intervention of 
Christ {Le Silence, Le Mont des Olivier s). Vigny believes that 
man's existence is unjustly ordered and that evil is often 
triumphant. This melancholy is the essential feature of his 
philosophy and arises not only from the facts of his life — 
and his exalted demands upon life — but also from his concep- 
tion of the poet as necessarily an isolated martyr (cf. Chatter- 
ton). A stoical silence or energetic labor constitutes the only 
refuge. Another refuge may appear in Nature, but, closely con- 
sidered, Nature does not answer the appeal of man (La Maison 
du berger) : 

On me dit une mere et je suis une tombe. 

For Vigny, the pathetic fallacy is pathetic folly. Therein 
he differs from such Romanticists as Lamartine. Vigny is 
almost the first to adopt the scientific attitude that the natural 
law is non-human and implacable. He is uncertain with regard 
to love. Delilah is viewed as an "enfant malade," but' more 
usually woman (Eva, Eloa) is idealized and made the symbol 
of beauty. Man is fated, whether under the ancient or the 
Christian dispensation (Les Destinees) to endless striving and 
endless failure. Without hope, but with resignation and in 
silence, he should endure his fate and show compassion towards 
his kind. Addressing Nature, the poet declares: 

Plus que tout votre regne et que ses splendeurs vaines, 
J'aime la majeste des souff ranees humaines. 

This message is expressed in language of a singular eleva- 
tion and sobriety. Vigny's best manner is simple and large, 
Stvle Classic rather than Romantic. He composed slowly, 

was not naturally productive, and is at times 



550 MUSSET, VIGNY, GAUTIER 

halting or obscure. Like Lamartine, he had an aristocratic 
contempt for the writer's trade. But just as Musset's style be- 
comes perfected through warm emotion, so does Vigny's through 
the cooler but intense processes of thought. With him the idea 
at its best imposes the proper form. He is, then, the intellectual 
among the Romanticists, and he reflects the more pessimistic 
side of the movement with nobility and sincerity. In his tech- 
nique, his view of nature and his impersonal manner he stands 
apart from Romanticism; yet a subjective mood or sentiment 
underlies the majority of his poems, which show Romantic in- 
fluences also in their exotic, primitive or historical coloring. A 
grave and melancholy power, a stern idealism, a soldierly view 
of duty and honor — these things elevate Vigny's poetic ex- 
pression to a very high level. 

The nature and the talent of Theophile Gautier (1811-72) 
were thoroughly artistic. He cared for nothing but art, he 
was a painter in his youth, and he developed to a 
high degree the quality of form in poetry. His ad- 
miration for Victor Hugo turned him from painting to poetry 
and it was at the premiere of Hernani that Gautier's pink 
doublet (" le gilet rouge ") symbolized his new fervor as well as 
his perpetual desire to scandalize the bourgeois. His early 
poems began to appear {Poesies, 1830; Albertus, 1832; La 
Comedie de la Mort, 1833). From 1836, Gautier became a 
galley-slave of journalism, a polygraph who wrote criticism, 
stories and travels. His appreciation of nature and art was 
enlarged by visits to various countries, especially by his trip 
to Spain in 1840. Poetry was still Gautier's chief attachment 
and in the publication of Emaux et Camees (1852), he attained 
his high-water mark. In person, " le bon Theo " was a sort 
of sunny Hercules, calm and almost Oriental in appearance, 
fond of the pleasant externalities of life. He significantly said 
of himself: "Je suis un homme pour qui le monde exterieur 
existe." 

Gautier's early poetry is violently Romantic. Albertus is 
a free and fantastic narrative poem, dealing with the trans- 
formations and orgies of a witch, containing both 
Early Poems macahre and Don j uanes que elements. Gautier 
here uses strong words and metaphors and is evidently striving 



GAUTIER'S ART 551 

for originality; but his composition of verse is solid and his 
talent for close description, with analogies to painting, is already 
prominent. Still more sepulchral in tone is La Comedie de la 
Mort, presenting a hero who is seeking an ideal love through 
many loves that are not ideal. This is Gautier's farewell to 
youthful Romanticism; but he also wrote about this time 
(Poesies diverses) some elegies as well as delicate and colorful 
poems of a more impersonal cast. This tendency is fully re- 
"Emaux et vealed in Emaux et Camees, a volume which must 
Camees" have been slowly elaborated and which crystallizes 
a transition in French poetry. From now on the movement is 
away from the sentimental and the personal towards the im- 
passive and the " Parnassian." 4 Gautier is the man who bridges 
the two schools; his more morbid Romanticism is reflected by 
his great admirer, Baudelaire; but his sense of objective form 
finds its continuation not only in Baudelaire but in the whole 
Parnassian group. 

The very title of Emaux et Camees implies delicate workman- 
ship, and the volume as a whole perfectly illustrates Gautier's 
Theory of artistic standards and processes. His point of de- 
Art parture, in theory, is Vart pour Fart; in practice, the 

example of other arts, especially painting and sculpture, con- 
trols his technique. The theory is indifferent to morality; not 
eager for emotions or ideas, it is concerned mainly with external 
beauty. The practice includes, first, the " seeing eye," whether 
as directed to the larger tableaux of nature or to the smaller 
gems of art; second, the clever hand, exercised in the manipula- 
tion of the brush and the chiselling of poetic cameos ; and finally, 
as a consequence of this attitude, frequent transpositions d'art — 
that is, the transportation of pictorial, sculptural and jewel-like 
effects from art into literature. It is significant that Gautier's 
favorite subjects are paintings and pastels, obelisks and pans 
de mur; also that his brother poets speak of him in terms of 
painting and enamelling. Emaux et Camees give an impression 
of slow chiselling and a kind of airy solidity; the poems stand 
out in relief like massy clouds before a thunder-shower. In 
this volume Gautier uses octosyllabic quatrains almost entirely, 
and it goes without saying that his sense of composition, in 
short pieces, is almost perfect. 

« See below. Bk. VII, Ch. III. 



552 MUSSET, VIGNY, GAUTIER 

" Art for Art's sake " is, then, Gautier's special contribution 
and his war-cry. He is not interested in politics, philosophy 
. . or religion, but he has enough intelligence to serve 

his own plastic ends. He also subdues emotion to 
the purposes of art. Personal incidents and love-affairs are 
treated, but they are made impersonal and serene. The form 
is certainly more evident than the feeling, and the form is a 
close transcription of beautiful reality. Gautier is a great stylist. 
His poetry has the correctness, limpidity and purity of the best 
prose — even of his own prose. In either field he possesses a 
very large vocabulary from which he can draw the choice word 
for exactness and vividness. His words often have an exotic 
or artistically technical coloring. He achieves picturesque bril- 
liancy in landscapes and interiors. His rhythms are subtle and 
varied, and the same may be said of his images, which are fre- 
quent and sustained. In his desire to give the sharp external 
impression, he anticipates the Imagists of today. In his in- 
sistence on beauty as the important content of life and of 
poetry, he narrows the Romantic formula, but he leads the way 
for a whole generation of modern French poets, who also usually 
follow his impersonal and plastic bent. His creed is epitomized 
in the poem called L'Art, of which part has been thus translated 
by Austin Dobson: 

All passes. Art alone 

Enduring stays to us; 
The Bust outlasts the throne, 
The Coin, Tiberius. 

Even the gods must go; 

Only the lofty Rhyme 
Not countless years o'erthrow, — 

Not long array of time. 



CHAPTER V 
THE ROMANTIC DRAMA 

The stage was the first thing affected by the Revolution, and 
as late as Napoleon, Classical tragedy was still supreme. Bona- 
Tenacity of parte reorganized the theaters and established the 
Tragedy f our houses — the Opera, the Opera-Comique, the 
Comedie-Frangaise and the Odeon — that remain subventioned 
by the government today. He also fostered the Classical forms 
because of their reactionary tendency; he wished his Empire to 
resemble the old monarchy. Talma and other notable tragedians 
trod the boards in the high Roman fashion, declaiming Corneille, 
Racine, Voltaire, their feeble imitators and the dilutions of Ducis. 
Even under the Restoration little visible change appeared until 
Hugo, though certain popular undercurrents were making for 
freedom. 

We have mentioned the work of Sebastien Mercier, 1 who 
broke theoretically with Classicism but was too timid in practice. 
« „ His name should be distinguished from that of 

MrpQ£C£ssors 

of Nepomucene Lemercier, who did just the opposite 

Romanticism thing: the latter did not dare to theorize but at- 
tempted various innovations, especially in Pinto (1800). This 
play is really a drame, written in prose and including the mix- 
ture of comic elements. There is little tragic dignity about Le- 
mercier, who suggests Bernard Shaw in his leveling of history to 
the bourgeois and practical plane. The subject of Pinto is akin 
to that of Hugo's Ruy Bias. More directly antecedent to the 
Romantic drama, however, is the Boulevard melodrama of Pixe- 
recourt and his followers. Pixerecourt (1773-1844) was called 
the " roi du melodrame," and no less than thirty thousand repre- 
sentations were accorded to his plays, which were quite lacking 
in literary value {Cristophe Colomb, Robinson Crusoe, Coelina). 
But it seems likely that such productions paved the way for Hugo 

i See above, p. 423 
553 



554* THE ROMANTIC DRAMA 

in the following respects: the attention paid to scenery and 
stage-devices, the mingling of comic and tragic elements, and the 
development of four staple figures of melodrama {jeune 'premier, 
heroine, heavy villain and grotesque buffoon). By laying a 
substratum of popularity for the new form, Pixerecourt served 
Hugo as Hardy had served Corneille. The poets of the twenties 
are transitional in their sympathies. Alexandre Soumet is 
vaguely Romantic in aspiration and more definitely so in his 
use of historical " machines " (for instance, Jeanne d'Arc, 1825) ; 
but he clings to the Classical rules. So does Casimir Delavigne 
in such early plays as Les Vepres siciliennes (1819). But 
Delavigne was the most fashionable poet of his decade, fol- 
lowing the Greek vogue in his Odes messeniennes and shifting 
more decidedly towards Byronism and Romanticism in his 
Marino Faliero (1829). The historical coloring of this play, 
as of Louis XI and of Les Enfants d'Edouard (Shakespearean) , 
bears witness to the new influences; also Delavigne, though 
essentially a compromiser, handles the unities with some freedom 
and introduces Romantic sentiments and temperaments. 

Various foreign influences should also be mentioned, such 
as the interest in German drama, due to Mme de Stael and 
Schlegel; Fauriel's translations from Manzoni (1823), who was 
the first Italian to rebel against the unities ; and particularly the 
change in the French attitude towards Shakespeare. This was 
caused partly by the visits of English actors to Paris. Their 
second visit (1827-28) was a notable event. Such players as 
Kean, Kemble, and Miss Smithson took literary Paris by storm. 
Hamlet and Othello were especially well received, and these per- 
formances affected the production of Dumas pere, Alfred de 
Vigny and Victor Hugo. 

The last-named writer was the Romantic leader in every field, 
and it was on the stage that he won the victory for the Romantic 
Hugo's cause. It should be noted that much of this drama is 

Theory polemic in intention. Hugo threw down the gauntlet 

in his Preface to Cromwell (written 1827). This document is 
considered as the manifesto of the new school. Hugo divides the 
course of poetry into three great ages, of which the modern is 
primarily dramatic and culminates in Shakespeare. But the dra- 
matic does not exclude an admixture of the epic or the lyric. The 



HUGO'S THEORIES 555 

author thus declares for a melange des genres — a famous phrase, 
more particularly applicable to the mingling of tragic and comic 
effects conspicuous in the Romantic drama. This combination, 
together with the juxtaposition of beautiful and ugly, of bad and 
good, is included in Hugo's " theory of the grotesque," involving 
an antithesis which he would derive philosophically from the 
dual nature of man. The grotesque is illustrated in art by 
Gothic architecture and by Shakespeare's alternations of buf- 
foonery and high tragedy ; it is found in nature itself, and Hugo 
boldly asserts: " Tout ce qui est dans la nature est dans l'art." 
This phrase expresses the broad Romantic view of both terms, 
in opposition to the Classic view of la belle nature. As regards 
drama and verse, the revolt is fundamentally against the neo- 
classical system. The forcible imposition of the unities, whether 
suitable or not, is characterized as a fetish of mediocrity and 
of slavish imitators. The only essential unity is that of action, 
which may well exclude the other two. Hugo also attacks the 
banal recit and insists on the importance of the concrete spec- 
tacle, with some use of local color. Like Diderot, he holds that 
rules are an impediment to genius. He wishes for more liberty 
in the Alexandrine, for more " characteristic " touches. He 
believes that verse is still the best vehicle for the serious drame: 
this term, as used by the Romanticists, designates an all-inclusive 
" tableau of life," especially the elaborate historical drama. 
Cromwell itself is a huge historical hurly-burly, but an impos- 
sible play. The real importance of Hugo's manifesto is in the 
new liberty which it evokes and the new theories which it sets 
in action. 

To make these theories count, there were the enthusiasm and 
talent of the royally gifted writers of that age — Hugo, Dumas 
"Hernani," yere, Musset and Vigny shall be our chief ex- 
1830. amples — ably seconded by admiring groups of 

artists and minor poets. These groups had the interests of 
literature at heart, they were inspired by the passion of reform 
and revolt, and they had gallant leaders. Consequently there 
was enough to make the atmosphere electric when, on February 
25, 1830, the first representation of Hernani was staged before 
the two rival camps. The Classicists protested against every 
daring enjambement, against every realistic or extravagant touch. 



556 THE ROMANTIC DRAMA 

But the Romanticists, rallying around the red gilet of Gautier, 
answered with vehement applause, cheering the fresh sweep of 
action and passion here displayed. For several nights the issue 
of the battle was in doubt, and then the opposition slowly gave 
way. The Romantic drama was an accomplished fact. 

The innovations effected by Hernani appear, first, in violat- 
ing the rules of the Alexandrine. The play begins with an 
Innovations en J ambe ^nt, or run-over line, of the kind that no 
Classicist could tolerate; again, many lines discard 
the set division of the Classical Alexandrine into two equal 
halves and employ an irregular division into three, frequently 
unequal periods. For example: 

Qu'est cet homme? Jesus mon Dieu! si j'appelais? 

contrasted with the Classical: 

Nuit et jour, en effet, pas a pas, je te suis. 

These two features (enjambement and " free cesura ") are 
henceforth characteristic of Romantic versification in general: 
but it should be remembered that even the Romanticists stick 
to Classic regularity in about ninety per cent of their verse. 
The path of freedom is none the less made clear. Hernani also 
offended " les purs," as they called themselves, by the use of 
everyday language, by calling a spade a spade on occasion; 
and' by alternating this tendency with gorgeous and even vio- 
lent epithets and figures. Another novelty in style is the broken 
movement, due to interruptions or shifts of mood. This gives 
rise to " moody " dialogue, as it may be termed, unlike the smooth 
Classic pattern. Again, Classical decorum is violated by the 
attention paid to objects and concrete action; this is manifest 
in the stage-directions, which here for the first time become 
elaborate. The unities, as necessary rules, are forever laid 
to rest. Henceforth, though many good plays are written within 
and the unities, no good play must be so written. 

Character- Hernani changes its place and time at will, and has 
lstlcs no compelling unity of action. Part of the time 

our sympathy is with Hernani, the gloomy bandit, and with his 
sweetheart, Dona Sol. In another act, we are more concerned 
with Don Ruy Gomez, the jealous old guardian of the girl. 



HERNANI 557 

In Act IV (which is frequently a hors d'ceuvre in the Romantic 
drama), we applaud the nobility of Charles V, the newly elected 
emperor. For a time it appears that Hernani, restored to rank 
and power by Charles, will win his bride, and a happy ending 
is indicated. But the vengeance of Ruy Gomez is still to be 
reckoned with ; in Act V he calls the bride and groom to account, 
with disastrous consequences for all concerned. A famous and 
typical expression of the Romantic temperament is to be found 
in Hernani's speech (Act III, scene IV) : 

Je suis une force qui va! 
Agent aveugle et sourd de mysteres funebres! 
Une ame de malheur fait'e avec des tenebres! 
Ou vais-je? je ne sais. Mais je me sens pousse 
D'un souffle impetueux, d'un destin insense. 
Je descends, je descends, et jamais ne m'arrete. 
Si parfois, haletant, j'ose tourner la tete, 
Une voix me dit: Marche! et rabime est profond, 
Et de flamme ou de sang je le vois rouge au fond! 
Cependant, a l'entour de ma course farouche, 
Tout se brise, tout meurt. Malheur a qui me touche! 
Oh! fuis! detourne-toi de mon chemin fatal, 
Helas! sans le vouloir, je te ferais du mal! 

The characters in the play are all Romantic types, moved by 
strong passions of love or revenge and repeating the typical 
gestures of melodrama. The removal of the unity of time should 
allow ample space for character development, but Hugo's psy- 
chology, here and elsewhere, is inferior to his lyric gift and in- 
tensity. There are fine poetic outbursts in Hernani, attended 
by brilliant coups de theatre. The construction, however, is not 
sound throughout, and the characters are excessive, theatrical 
and often untrue to life. 

Hugo's other plays may be more briefly considered. Marion 
Delorme (written 1829, produced 1831) is the story of a 
Oth r Plavs cour ^ esan redeemed by love and is the first play of 
importance to treat that favorite Romantic theme 
(cf . La Dame aux camelias) . It is an unpleasant but powerful 
tragedy, and the two main characters — Marion and her lover 
Didier — however exaggerated, are impressively presented. 
The construction of the play would be excellent, were it not 
marred by the introduction of a burlesque element. Le Roi 



558 THE ROMANTIC DRAMA 

s : r amuse (1832) was removed from the boards, partly on account 
of its horror, but mainly because it presents the monarchy, 
especially Francis I, in no favorable light. The King endeavors 
to seduce a girl whose father, the King's jester, unwittingly has 
his own daughter killed instead of the libertine monarch. From 
this drama, Verdi took the plot of his opera, Rigoletto. Le 
Roi s'amuse shows the development of Hugo's democratic senti- 
ments. Passing over minor plays {Lucrece Borgia, Marie Tudor 
and Angelo) — which are in prose and thereby even more melo- 
dramatic — we come to Ruy Bias (1838). After Hernani, this 
is Hugo's most important play. The two dramas antithetically 
treat of the rising splendor of the Spanish monarchy and of its 
gloomy decline. In Ruy Bias, the historical presentation of a 
corrupted court and its usages is very well done. The plot 
offers a violent contrast in situation. Ruy Bias is a lackey, 
who through his passion for the Queen rises to high dominion 
in Spain. He is overthrown partly through the machinations 
of the villain, Don Salluste, partly because his own character 
is not equal to his opportunities. The moral seems to be, once 
a lackey always a lackey. The most interesting personage in 
the drama is the bohemian Don Cesar de Bazan. The passions 
are strongly depicted, and the plot is unusually logical and 
swift. With Ruy Bias, Hugo's dramatic glory ended. Les 
Burgraves (1843) was a failure, in spite of its epic quality, and 
marks the finish of the Romantic drama. As Gautier signifi- 
cantly said: "II n'y a plus de jeunes gens"; reactionary tastes 
were in control of writers and public. 

Not only did Hugo liberate versification but several of his 
plays tended also to liberate the minds of the people and to 
Qualities: serve democracy. Historically, these dramas are 
Defects and likely to take one-sided views, but they traverse a 
wide range of countries and periods, at least five 
countries being represented. A wide free scope in place, time 
and subject, is an essential feature of the treatment; a new 
complexity is given to drama, by the expression of things his- 
torical, picturesque, physiological, "moody" and concrete; the 
caracteristique offers realistic details about manners and 
costumes; stage-setting is for the first time fully described; the 
number of speaking parts is far beyond that of Classic tragedy. 



A. DUMAS PERE 559 

But with all these additions, the Romantic theater remains 
inferior to the Classical in harmonious artistic worth. The 
reason is that Hugo's drama is mostly melodrama. We find 
constant excesses and forced antitheses, whether of language, 
character or plot. These " fatal " heroes, forever making the 
same gestures, these suddenly converted kings or lackeys do not 
give a sense of reality. And the plots, in spite of their fevered 
movement, frequently lack the solid construction that makes 
for dramatic probability. There are too many wild flights, too 
many strange devices and tricks; hiding places, disguises, pon- 
iards, sombreros, duels and scaffolds; and grotesque buffoonery 
is pushed beyond all limits. At the same time, there are scenes, 
situations and coups de theatre (like the picture-scene in Hernani) 
that are extremely effective ; there are tirades that can still sweep 
an audience off its feet; and always Hugo remains the master 
of poetic expression, especially in love passages. This is the 
greatest merit of his drama. With Hugo, whatever is not lyrical 
is melodramatic. 

Alexandre Dumas pere, 2 in spite of the great vogue of his 
romances, figures in French literature rather as a dramatist. 
. He wrote mainly in prose, and his plays are of two 
kinds: the big historical " spectacle," and the more 
personal drama of Romantic character and passion. He was 
even more melodramatic than Hugo; he underwent similar 
foreign influences (Shakespeare and Byron) , and he too brought 
in many lands and epochs. A sort of rivalry is to be noted 
between Delavigne, Hugo and Dumas; in successive plays one 
of the trio would strive to outdo the others in strong effects. 
Dumas had a more consecutive dramatic sense than Hugo, but 
his plays, lacking all poetic virtue, are often brutal, feverish 
and crude. Coming after Pixerecourt, he is the first Roman- 
ticist to evoke the national past and to " put the memoirs into 
action," in ways that are picturesque, vivid and violent. Such 
are the characteristics of Henri HI et sa cour (1829), a well- 
conducted play of jealousy and assassination; of Christine and 
her lover Monaldeschi (1830); of Napoleon Bonaparte (1831), 
which begins the series of vast historical tableaux. In the 
same year, Dumas also begins the other kind of drama (personal 

» For his biography and his novels, see Ch. VI, below. 



560 THE ROMANTIC DRAMA 

passion) by his remarkable and famous Antony. This play 
carries to an extreme the presentation of the Romantic hero, 
who is the victim of fatality and an outcast from society. 
Antony pushes his passion and misanthropy to the point of 
slaying the woman whom he loved, because in his (and her) 
distorted view, this is the only way of saving her lost honor. 
Other historical plays are Charles VII chez ses grands vassaux, 
Catherine Howard and particularly La Tour de Nesle (1832). 
This last has been called a " fantastic evocation of the 
Middle Ages." It deals with the loves of Marguerite de Bour- 
gogne and Buridan, who pass through all degrees of criminality 
and excess; murders, dungeons, sorcery, disguises, and an es- 
pecial emphasis on physical suffering, are characteristic of this 
play and of the author's melodramatic talent generally. 
Dumas staged also many successes from the " Babylonian 
edifice " of his novels — La Reine Margot, Les Trois Mousque- 
taires — huge productions, taking many hours to act. His 
preference was for historical subjects, which he recreated in the 
alembic of an imagination both riotous and unrestrained. The 
best of his plays, well-plotted and grimly powerful, are more 
widely representative of the drame than is the lyrical output 
of Victor Hugo. 

The plays of Musset also fall mainly within two divisions : the 
play of fancy in the manner of Shakespeare, and the drawing- 
room comedy in the manner of Marivaux. The 
Musset 

first kind may be illustrated by Fantasio and by A 

quoi revent les jeunes filles. Such plays reflect the woodland 
atmosphere of As You Like It, together with a sort of irresponsi- 
bility as to time, place and setting; a fanciful charm in the 
treatment of femininity and in poetic style also suggests Shake- 
speare. The other type, illustrated by II faut qu y une porte soit 
ouverte ou jermee, uses the salon atmosphere and shows the wit 
and delicacy of a more Romantic marivaudage. Musset's origi- 
nality shines through his imitations. The titles of his plays 
are frequently taken from popular proverbs, which they illus- 
trate in action ; hence these dramas are called comedies-proverbes 
(cf . II ne faut jurer de rien, La Coupe et les levres) ■ The pro- 
verbes are written mainly in prose, though of a poetic cast. 
Musset's best plays were composed from 1830 to 1840. 



MUSSET'S DRAMA 561 

Musset wrote for his own satisfaction and for the reading 
public rather than for the stage. Only a few of his eighteen 
dramas were acted during his lifetime and are regularly pre- 
sented to-day. The characteristics of the " closet-drama " are 
seen in their somewhat archaic style, the rapid changes of 
scene, the wilful play of fancy rather to the neglect of solid con- 
struction, and a tendency to interrupt the action with lyric 
individualism. Fantasio depicts a hero of romantic tempera- 
Particular ment who rebels against the commonplace and be- 
Plays comes a buffoon in order to aid a pretty princess. 

A quoi r event les jeunes filles is a poetic extravaganza, which 
derides the " romanesque." Un Caprice is also rather anti- 
romantic in theme ; a man has a passing fancy for a woman who 
sends him back to his wife. II ne faut jurer de Hen again pre- 
sents a charming heroine who convinces a rake that domestic love 
is best. Other interesting plays are Barberine and Les Caprices 
de Marianne. Lorenzaccio is a drame, in which the chief 
character is a kind of Hamlet drawn against a Renaissance back- 
ground. This is considered one of the best historical plays of the 
period. The best of the comedies-proverbes is On ne badine pas 
avec V amour, with its very significant title. Here we have 
echoes of the affair with George Sand, not only in the famous 
speech which declares the elevating power of love, but also in 
the cold and coquettish figure of the heroine. She rejects the 
affection of her cousin, Perdican. He begins to console himself 
with a village girl, the heroine then becomes jealous and seeks 
to win Perdican back. The play ends with the suicide of the 
village gjirl and the tragic separation of the would-be lovers 
who have " jested." 

It is evident that Musset 's plays, like his poetry, tend to the 
Romantic exaltation of love. These dramas frequently have the 
true " lyrical cry." But the passionate expression of sentiment 
alternates with the reverse of the medal — a Byronic and cynical 
attitude (cf. La Coupe et les levres). Musset is excellent in 
poetic flights, his dialogue is often witty and appropriate, and he 
is more competent in the depiction of character — mainly the 
several varieties of his own character — than any other Roman- 
tic dramatist. He understands what makes a dramatic situation. 
But instead of sticking to the development of the plot he often 



562 THE ROMANTIC DRAMA 

prefers to wander irresponsibly in charming and imaginative 
bypaths. His plays have a personal and unique attractiveness. 

Alfred de Vigny's drama also closely reflects his indi- 
vidual nature. He was first inspired by the English actors 
Vigny to P rocmce certain Shakespearean adaptations 

(Othello, 1829; Shylock, never acted), which 
were the best hitherto made in French. In opposition to 
the prudery and thinness of Ducis, they convey to a high 
degree the spirit, the fulness and the freedom of the orig- 
inal. Vigny also attempted the historical drama in La 
Marechale d'Ancre and wrote a graceful salon-comedy in Quitte 
pour la peur. But his best play, which many think the greatest 
play of the Romantic era, is the drame intime of Chatterton. The 
legend of Chatterton, the " marvellous boy," is used to develop 
the thesis of the poet-martyr: the possessor of such a talent is 
necessarily in discord with ordinary life and must live and die 
unhappily. Chatterton is placed in a quiet domestic setting, an 
old Quaker and the heroine, Kitty Bell, are kind to him; but there 
is a coarse business husband, and the hard world is too much for 
the poet. He is mortified by lordly patronage, his manuscripts 
are finally rejected, and his love for Kitty cannot be honorably 
returned. Therefore he kills himself. The treatment is elevated 
and even calm in tone, the sentiment fine and poignant. In pre- 
senting the dilemma of the poet-martyr, Vigny gives a new sub- 
ject to the Romantic theater. He also crystallizes in dramatic 
form the main motif of his own poetry, the lonely and melancholy 
devotion to "l'esprit pur." 

Thus the Romantic Drama has to its credit a dozen plays of 
considerable strength or charm. It expresses best the surge of 
feeling and of passion. Its poetry is in excess of its 
strictly theatrical values. Its powers of character- 
ization are not great and are rather monotonously exercised: 
the " fatal " hero is always in revolt, the suffering heroine is 
always in love. As drama, the Romantic output is surpassed 
both by the Classical and by the Realistic kind. Racine excels 
Hugo in well-balanced art, just as Augier excels him in truth 
to life. Yet the Romantic drama appears historically as a 
necessary bridge between Classicism and Realism. It for- 
ever destroyed Classical tragedy, by its establishment of a larger 



CONCLUSION 563 

framework and its abolition of set rules. It anticipates 
Realism in the attention paid to characteristic and concrete 
detail, whether in vocabulary, dialogue, description or stage- 
directions. But of course the spirit of Romanticism is different 
from that of any other school, and to those who admire the 
ardors and melancholies of that spirit, the Romantic drama will 
always appeal. 



CHAPTER VI 
THE ROMANTIC NOVEL 

Either the Romanticists were disposed to view nature and 
society as symbolic of their inner dreams; or else, self-absorbed, 
they tended to neglect the realities of the outer world. Hence 
they were usually disqualified as novelists of contemporary 
French life. They sought refuge in the ivory tower, in the 
picturesque past, in exotic landscapes or realms of pure fancy, 
and finally in humanitarian visions. So we may classify four 
different types of fiction, which at least offered a considerable 
range of imagination and feeling. 

1. The Personal Novel and Stendhal. 

The novel of sentiment, issuing from Rousseau, from Mme de 
Stael and especially from Rene, is dominant at the beginning 
The Personal of the century. Senancour's Obermann (1804) goes 
Novel farther than Rene in its representation of morbid 

pessimism and an impotent will. Without being a masterpiece, 
the book contains much sincere thought and feeling; there is 
almost no outer action. Senancour's single frustrated love-affair 
is incorporated in this novel, which presents as its main interest 
the sufferings of an uneasy and despairing soul. Because of this 
feature, Obermann, in spite of its early date, has been held to 
anticipate the gloomy decline of Romanticism in the thirties. 
Two other important autobiographical novels belong to this 
of an intimate heart-affair, analyzed with great skill and pene- 
later period. Sainte-Beuve's Volupte (1834) is again the record 
tration. The book lacks emotional appeal, and the hero's ego- 
tism and sensual mysticism are not attractive. But Sainte- 
Beuve frequently attains both scientific precision and a supple 
artistic expressiveness. Volupte thus has affinities with the work 
of Stendhal; and the hero (Amaury) , though a dreamer, believes 
in the power of action and will. Such attributes are not con- 

564 



STENDHAL-BEYLE 565 

spicuous in Musset's Confession d'un enfant du siecle (1836), 
which is turgid with the full Romantic tide of aspiration and 
despair. It records the fiasco with George Sand and is a lament 
for unfulfilled love. Sincerity, sensibility and sadness make this 
book representative of its generation, while the less pleasing 
" confessional " note goes back to Rousseau. More character- 
istic of Musset's talent are such charming and melancholy tales 
as Frederic et Bernerette and Le Merle blanc. As personal 
novels should be mentioned also the Stello of Vigny, and much 
later (1863) the Dominique of Fromentin (see Bk. VIII, 
Ch. III). 

The psychological novel, whose chief representative in this 
period was Stendhal, may be associated with the above. Henri 
Beyle (1783-1842), who took the pen-name of Sten- 
dhal, is one of the most curious and interesting figures 
of his time. He stands distinctly outside of the main Romantic 
current and was generally at odds with his French environment. 
He disliked his own family and his early surroundings at Gre- 
noble, was unhappy in Paris, and much preferred Italy, where he 
mainly lived after the Restoration. But he took a creditable 
part in the Napoleonic campaigns; indeed, Napoleon and 
Byron were his chief heroes. A " romantic hussar," a man of 
action, he believed in energy, liberty and the development of 
the passions. Outwardly, Beyle was hard, proud and egotistical ; 
but inwardly he had " too sensitive a heart and too clairvoyant 
a mind." He was a skeptic and a psychologist, deriving intel- 
lectually from the ideologues. 1 His two great passions were war 
and love, and his eleven heart-affairs are boldly analyzed in his 
four chief books. De l' Amour (1822) consists of a series of 
notes, almost formless, written in the dry precise style which 
was habitual with Stendhal. The book divides love into four 
categories and deals with the effect of each variety upon the 
several temperaments. Eccentricity and obscurity of statement 
alternate with remarkable penetration. For instance, we have 
the famous theory of " crystallization," according to which one's 
sweetheart becomes the center of the world's beauty and interest; 
and beauty itself is defined as " la promesse du bonheur." Sten- 
dhal's novels amplify the themes here suggested. Armance 

1 Especially Destutt de Tracy. See above, Bk. IV, Ch. I. 



566 THE ROMANTIC NOVEL 

(1827) deals with the failure of two proud sensitive souls to come 
to an understanding. Far more important in the history of 
fiction is Le Rouge et le Noir (1831). The title indicates the 
strife between the Napoleonic spirit of the military and the 
power of the clergy, whom Stendhal thoroughly hated. The 
originality of the book appears both in the manner of treatment 
and the character of the hero, Julien Sorel. The latter is no 
romantic sentimentalist, but personifies the strong-willed egotis- 
tical arriviste of the period (cf. Balzac). Julien makes love in 
order to further his ambition and slays his first mistress when she 
betrays him to his second. The women are modeled upon 
Stendhal's intimate acquaintances. Their conduct is open to 
the charge of improbability. But in the dissection of motive, 
the presentation of ambition, passion and revenge, the book 
shows a power which was rare at that time. La Chartreuse de 
Far me (1839) makes easier reading, is more eventful and pictur- 
esque and seems wider in its appeal. Stendhal is now in his 
favorite Italy; Italian passions, intrigues and society are excel- 
lently depicted. The author's worst fault is usually a kind of 
hard tension and aggressiveness, whose effects are less conspic- 
uous here. His forte at all times is the minute observation of 
" soul-states." In La Chartreuse de Parme, he reveled in the 
portrayal and analysis of the impulsive duchess, the highwayman 
and the unscrupulous hero. Stendhal's heroes are really himself 
in various environments, and thus his fiction is linked with the 
personal novel. He also wrote Racine et Shakespeare (1824), a 
paradox on the Romantic revolt, which shows that he hardly 
understood the movement. His books were little read in their 
own period. He was evidently born out of his due time, and 
it is not surprising that he waited (as he prophesied) half a 
century for recognition. Then occurred a curious literary re- 
vival. Stendhal was claimed and praised both by the Natural- 
ists and the psychologists. Taine, Zola, Bourget, Rod and Her- 
vieu vied in doing him honor or in imitating his processes ; and his 
influence has become conspicuous on the latter-day analytical 
novel. 



VIGNY AND MERIMEE 567 

2, The Historical Novel and Hugo. 

We shall see in the next chapter how Romanticism " revolu- 
tionized history," how the enthusiastic imaginations of Thierry 
and of Michelet put life and color into the Middle 
Ages. But the historians themselves were actually 
inspired by the Romantic fiction of Chateaubriand and Scott, 
and the historical novel stands as a dominant literary form for 
nearly two decades after 1826. This date marks the appearance 
of the first important example, Alfred de Vigny 's Cinq-Mars, 
a romance of the conspiracy under Louis XIII. Through his 
serious attention to the genre and his abundant documenta- 
tion — having read some three hundred works in preparation 
— Vigny really organizes the historical novel after the pat- 
tern of Sir Walter Scott: the study of manners and costumes 
together with character-sketches of the epoch treated. But Vi- 
gny's pen is too heavy to create a vivid masterpiece, his figures 
are obscured by their environment, and the book lacks life and 
verve. The milieu and the historical color are, however, well 
represented, and thereby Vigny makes the " first evocation of 
the national past " in Romantic fiction. 

Merimee's Chronique de Charles IX is a more authentic and 
vital novel, and there are features in the author's character and 
... . , career which will help explain this. Prosper Meri- 

mee (1803-1870) was born a Parisian, but with a 
strain of English blood and English phlegm in his make-up. 
With his intimate, Stendhal, he shared powers of objectivity and 
of psychological penetration rare among the Romanticists ; arch- 
eological researches were also prominent in his mind. He be- 
gan writing with the so-called Theatre de Clara Gazul (1825), 
containing plays in imitation of the Spanish drama. The " local 
color " in this is excellent, as also in another mystification called 
La Guzla, a collection of spurious Illyrian ballads which quite 
imposed upon the public. Merimee thus shows his capacity for 
dealing ironically with Romantic motives. He led for some years 
the life of a Parisian man of fashion, winning fame not only 
through the Chronique but through the series of nouvelles which 
will be treated in the next section. In 1830 he paid a visit to 
Spain and formed a lasting association with the family of the 



568 THE ROMANTIC NOVEL 

future Empress Eugenie. His heart-affairs culminated in the 
correspondence known as Lettres a une inconnue — " probably 
his best romance," since here alone do we find adequate feeling. 
A cultivated man of the world, a student and linguist, Merimee 
was appointed Inspector-general of historical monuments, and his 
archeological preoccupations overflow into his tales. He became 
an Academician, a promoter of such exotic interests as Russian 
fiction, and under the Empire he wielded some power as senator 
and diplomat. 

Written during Merimee's youth, the Chronique du regne de 
Charles IX (1829), represents the artistic flowering of the his- 
The torical novel. Proceeding from Scott, as did all of 

" Chronique " these writers, Merimee conserves the famous pictur- 
esqueness of description and dialogue which characterize the 
Waverley Novels ; also he uses true historical figures (kings and 
potentates) mainly as background and concentrates on the en- 
deavor to depict manners through typical invented figures and 
vivid scenes. Of the latter, several are imitated from D'Au- 
bigne's Les Aventures du Baron de Fameste (1630). With 
sprightliness and ease Merimee presents successively the German 
mercenaries, the raffines (dandies) of the epoch, court scenes 
and various occupations of the sixteenth century. The author's 
great virtue is that he is a master of brevity, as opposed to 
the long descriptions of Scott, Hugo and Balzac. Another 
quality is his impartial objectivity. Relating the strife of 
Catholics and Protestants at the time of the massacre of St. 
Bartholomew, Merimee holds a brief for neither side; he ironi- 
cally shows how conversions could be involved with personal 
influences, as where the seductive Diane de Turgis woos Mergy 
partly in the hope of winning him to Catholicism. The heart- 
interest is prettily handled, but is left somewhat in the air at 
the end, with Merimee's characteristic indifference. The style 
is beyond praise, terse, witty and finished. Well-written, inter- 
esting, with excellent characterization and a large amount of 
historical truth, the Chronique du regne de Charles IX remains 
the most artistically proportioned novel of this kind. But like 
most of the author's work, it lacks strong emotion. 

Victor Hugo introduced, as he wished to do, an epic range 
and significance into the novel. He shows again his poetic 



HUGO 569 

power of vision, his liking for large symbols and vivifications. 
Notre-Dame de Paris (1831), on the picturesque side marvel- 
" Notre-Dame ousl y revives the fifteenth century and makes the 
de Paris" Cathedral itself, in all its Gothic elaboration, the 
epitome of that century and the hero of the book. The very 
bells of the cathedral are animated, the bell-ringer, Quasimodo, 
is a " human gargoyle," and the descriptions of Paris at large 
are unusually vivid and lifelike. Unfortunately this gift does 
not extend to the creation of character, and Hugo's lack of 
psychological power was never more conspicuous. There are 
no grays or browns on his palette ; he silhouettes people in black 
and white; and in order to display " the continual antitheses of 
God," a character is likely to be black within and white without, 
or vice versa (the ugly Quasimodo versus the handsome Phoebus) . 
As for plot, we find many excursions, long descriptions and 
melodrama, whether of the improbable or the brutal kind. But 
individual scenes and the massed effects of crowds are often 
excellent. The style is characteristic of its author, colorful, evoc- 
ative, very large in vocabulary and in imaginative appeal. This 
power of imaginative rendering, of summoning back the swarm- 
ing life of the Middle Ages, is the best feature of Notre-Dame. 
A certain interest in the proletariat is discernible in the above 
novel and is more conspicuous in Les Travailleurs de la mer and 
His Social in Les Miser ables. The former work is a fruit of 
Novels Hugo's Guernsey sojourn and depicts the warfare 

between human and elemental forces — an epic conception. So 
the lonely fisherman, Gilliat, struggles with waves and storms 
and is finally involved in the great combat with the octopus. 
Les Miserables (1862) was written two decades before it was 
published and thus properly belongs to the Romantic era. This 
novel, for breadth and massiveness, is Hugo's most imposing 
work. It is a " chaos of all genres and subjects," ranging in 
tone from the lyric idyll to apocalyptic prose, including human- 
itarian sentimentalism, pathos, bathos, discussions of argot and of 
sewers, the battle of Waterloo, politics, and antiquarianism. The 
five loosely coordinated books, the episodes, and the interventions 
of the author show that he is using the novel less as a form of 
art than as a vehicle for his social views. Of his two main ideas, 
the first is that embodied in the title : the proletariat (Jean Val- 



570 THE ROMANTIC NOVEL 

jean, Fantine) is crushed by organized society, represented by 
its prejudices and its police; and secondly, Hugo believes that 
human misery and crime may offer their own expiation, as in the 
case of Valjean, the ex-convict. The early parts, concerning the 
redemption of Valjean, are surely the best and the most moving; 
the great merit of the novel (as in the case of Dickens and of 
Tolstoy) is in its power of making the reader thrill to the simpler 
feelings of humanity; for example, the desperation and devotion 
of Fantine 's mother and the idyllic loves of Fantine and Marius. 
The variety of the milieux treated also adds to the range of the 
social novel. On the other hand, the characters are delineated 
either superficially or with too much symbolism — Javert as the 
policeman — and the wandering story allows too many improba- 
bilities and coincidences. Hugo conferred upon fiction the two 
gifts of his imaginative style and his encyclopedic ardor. His 
last novel, Quatre-vingt-treize, is a return to the historical 
romance. It deals with the Terror, in the Vendee and in Paris, 
and presents excellent pictures of the Revolution. Hugo's fond- 
ness for children reappears, also his animism or the power of 
endowing external objects with life. Purely as fiction, Quatre- 
vingt-treize ranks among his best work. 

Finally, Alexandre Dumas pere (1802-70) represents the full 
popular success of the historical novel and also its artistic deca- 
dence. Dumas, a mixture of noble and negroid 
Dumas pere 

blood, drew from his father the cult of Napoleonic 

energy which overflows into his life, his dramas and his novels. 
Scott and Shakespeare were his literary masters. His dramatic 
successes (see preceding chapter) launched him on a tide of high 
living and fast writing which he kept up for forty years. In 
fiction he was responsible for nearly three hundred substantial 
volumes, a certain portion being delivered by his " factory " of 
collaborators. Like Balzac, Dumas carried his imagination into 
life itself, living fantastically, buying schooners, building a huge 
palace of " Monte Cristo," which had to be sold for debt. Towards 
the last he became a poverty-stricken wanderer. He was a strong 
eupeptic person and put his vigorous vitality into his ro- 
mances, which otherwise are often improbable, whether as history 
or fiction. But Dumas' robust treatment, his popularizing genius 
and his dramatic temperament make him the chief representa- 



THE NOUVELLE 571 

tive of the " cloak-and-sword " novel, which he handles with 
much narrative skill, especially in dialogue. He gives us the 
spectacle of a past which cannot have existed as a whole, though 
many separate traits are historical. His sources were usually the 
memoir-writers of the various periods; but the memoirs were 
hastily read and freely adapted by Dumas or his collaborators. 
His characters are of the simplest types and his style is poor; 
also he is fond of melodramatic incident and he boldly " fakes " 
history when he cannot find it; consequently most of his work is 
below par from the standpoint of literature. Exceptions must 
be made for the best of the Valois series, for the Trois Mous- 
quetaires (1844) and for one or two novels centering around 
Marie Antoinette. These relics of our youth still stand out 
alluringly and are still entertaining. It was as an " entertainer " 
that Dumas became a prey to the roman-jeuilleton, a news- 
paper-serial form of publication which hindered the footsteps 
of Balzac and Sand, and finds its culmination in the wild creations 
of Eugene Sue (Les Mysteres de Paris, Le Juif errant). Both 
Dumas and Sue flourished in the forties, which period then marks 
the decline of the historical novel proper. 

3. Tales and Fantasies. 

The master of the nouvelle 2 is Merimee, Romantic in his de- 
piction of exotic scenes and primitive passions. But he is the 
"Classicist of Romanticism" in his objective coolness and the 
admirable qualities of his restrained style. Let us consider, 
among his best works, Colombo,, Carmen and La Venus d'llle. 
The celebrated Colombo (1840) remains the most finished exam- 
ple of his art. Already in Mateo Falcone, Merimee had dealt 
with Corsican passions, but with less direct observation and 
vraisemblance. Colombo is remarkable for excellent and not too 
excessive local color, for the skilful transition to the Corsican 
point of view, and for the able characterization of Colomba her- 
self. This independent and revengeful girl gradually leads her 

2 This term will be used mainly in its modern signification of a long short-story, 
tending towards the "novelette"; the term conte will mean short-story; but at times 
the earlier meaning of the two words will persist, the nouvelle as the more realistic 
type, the conte as suggesting the fantastic or marvellous (Contes cruels, Contes dee 
mille et une Nuits) 



572 THE ROMANTIC NOVEL 

more civilized brother to the point of slaying their hereditary 
enemy. Several of the minor characters, especially those without 
the law, are well sketched. The book is a masterpiece of concise 
and sustained narrative power. These qualities are not so visible 
in Carmen, which is loosely composed, especially as compared 
with the dramatic versions. The archeologist who tells the 
story is not sufficiently alive to the misfortunes of Carmen's be- 
sotted lover. But the heroine is amply and powerfully displayed 
and creates the role of the Spanish " vampire." La Venus d'llle 
is really a conte in its dealing with the fantastic and supernat- 
ural world. It springs from the myth of the statue of Venus 
whom a mortal has unwittingly espoused to his own great det- 
riment. Besides these stories of primitive passions, Merimee 
also sponsored the nouvelle mondaine in the dandyism and 
worldly-wiseness of Le Vase etrusque and La double Meprise. 
Sangfroid is Merimee's virtue as well as his fault. Emotion 
with him is sporadic, but his judicious constraint, together with 
the ease and elegance of his finished style must place him very 
high. Colomba has been called " un roman dont le seul defaut 
est d'etre aujourd'hui sans defauts." 

The "fantastic " school of story-telling, fathered by Nodier's 
talent, finds its natural leader in Gautier. His early volume, 
r . Les Jeunes-France (1833) combines gaiety, libertin- 

ism and irony. He indulges in persiflage against 
certain Romantic excesses and habitually chooses from the move- 
ment only what he needs for his own artistic purposes. In the 
novel Mademoiselle de Maupin (1835) and in Fortunio, we 
are frankly in a pagan wonderland, where morality is in abey- 
ance, and where passion, beauty and wealth are supreme. Two 
of Gautier's major themes, fantasy and the macabre, are found 
in La Morte amoureuse, a superbly constructed story of a wild 
love that conquers death. The idea of " phantom love " or the 
dream-mistress is very insistent in this author's tales. It recurs 
in Arria Marcella, in Omphale, Une Nuit de Cleopdtre, etc. This 
reveals Gautier's type of Romanticism. It is the kind that re- 
volts against the mediocre and the ugly aspects of modernity 
and seeks escape either in exotic lands or the distant past. Such 
heroes as Fortunio, Gyges and Tiburce (in La Toison d'Or) 
are mouthpieces for the expression of Gautier's dreams and 



GAUTIER'S STORIES 573 

longings, which are sensuous and plastic rather than idealistic. 
They are voiced, however, not in the more flamboyant 
manner of Romanticism, but moderately, artistically, with 
a care for diction and elegant decoration. Gautier is still 
writing enamels and cameos. La Jettatura (1856) might 
in other hands be full of wild throbs and rhetoric — it is a 
tale of the evil eye, of lost love and duels and suicide — but 
it is treated by Gautier in a mild-mannered and somewhat 
ironic fashion that removes much of its dramatic force. Local 
color and a choice style are the dominant interests. Similarly, 
Le Capitaine Fracasse (1861-63) belongs to the Romantic 
era as a historical fantasy. Following Scarron, Gautier resusci- 
tates a band of strolling players, interweaves their fortunes with 
those of some youthful nobles, and beautifully describes certain 
features and landmarks of the epoch (Louis XIII) , especially 
the Chateau de la Misere. Le Capitaine Fracasse is for many 
the most delightful of Gautier's novels; it is akin to the pica- 
resque romance of adventure. His brilliant style, his fine prose 
rhythm, his sense of color and form, his search for unusual or 
exotic characters, are more conspicuous than any wealth of 
ideas or any depth of sensibility. 

Gautier and Hugo kept up their Romanticism well into the 
second half of the century. Two latter-day Romanticists, writers 
of fantastic tales, are Villiers de l'lsle-Adam (1838-89), author 
of Contes cruels, Isis, etc., and the eccentric Barbey d'Aurevilly 
(1808-89) . The latter achieved striking effects in his best novel, 
Le Chevalier des Touches, and in a collection of stories well/ 
named Les Diaboliques. 

4. George Sand. 

Aurore Dupin, who married the Baron Dudevant and is best 
known by her pen-name of George Sand, led a productive and 

L variegated life (1804-76). She came of a mixed 

stock, which on her mother's side had been very 
irregular in its love-affairs; her paternal grandmother was se- 
vere and aristocratic: the girl's youth was divided between 
the two households, and it is characteristic that she kept her 
affection for both. Most of her childhood was passed in the 



574 THE ROMANTIC NOVEL 

ancient and pleasant province of Berry (central France), whither 
she returned in her old age and where many of her stories are 
located. Religious phases, a convent education in Paris and 
much reading of Rousseau were followed by the stultifying mar- 
riage of convenience with Dudevant, whom Aurore presently 
abandoned. But she remained devoted to her two children. She 
was launched on her literary career partly through the collabora- 
tion of Jules Sandeau and through influential friendships. The 
affair with Musset was preceded and followed by others. But 
no emotion could permanently upset the deep placidity of George 
Sand's character, nor interrupt the sequence of her numerous vol- 
umes. She traveled abroad about 1836, became interested in 
the doctrines of 1848, and later retired to her province, where 
she was known to the neighborhood as " la bonne dame de No- 
hant." An interesting correspondence with Flaubert belongs 
to this period; he emphasizes the head and she prefers the 
heart. Instead of art for art's sake, she upholds " Tart pour le 
vrai, Part pour le beau et le bon." 

Hers was a big broad nature, amoral or apathetic in certain 
respects, but capable of much ardor and devotion. George Sand 
was always in love with somebody or something and 
the four stages of her productiveness simply vary the 
object of her affections. The first period (1832-40) is the epoch 
of V amour-passion (Stendhal's phrase) and marks the creation 
of her special type, " la femme incomprise." In a series of 
feverish novels (Indiana, Lelia, Valentine, Mauprat) , the author- 
ess expresses her violent reaction from her house of bondage 
and proclaims the rights of free love. Her reputation was made 
by Indiana (1832), which is the first novel to hold forth lyri- 
cally on woman's sufferings, and may be taken as typical of the 
series. A young girl, having married an old man, is attended 
by two would-be lovers. The one, " Sir Ralph," is her cousin 
and guardian. Mute, devoted and stolid, he protects her from 
the selfish passion of the other lover, who is not above courting 
the Creole maid in lieu of her mistress. When Indiana has 
gone through countless sufferings and humiliations in the affair, 
" Sir Ralph " proposes a joint suicide which somehow results 
in their union instead. The story contains violent scenes and 
declamations against the cruelty of man. Lelia is even stronger 



GEORGE SAND 575 

in the enthroning of Romantic passion. The revolt against 
marriage expressed in the above novels led to a wider revolt 
in George Sand's second or socialistic period (1840-48). Hav- 
ing been subjected to diverse strong influences, Lamennais in 
religion, Proudhon and a certain Michel (de Bourges) in radical 
politics, she proceeded to mingle utopianism and metaphysics in 
various novels (for example, Le Compagnon du Tour de France). 
They are not remarkable for strong thought or consistency, but 
again they show emotion — which is now the love of humanity — 
and her usual charm of style. This series also includes the in- 
teresting Consuelo, which is concerned with eighteenth- century 
history and intrigue. More purely " social " is the communistic 
and leveling Meunier d'Angibault, in which a good deal of prop- 
erty is burned in order that a rich widow may marry an artisan. 
It is generally conceded that there is too much " thesis " and 
declamation about George Sand's problem-novels. After the 
disillusionment of 1848, she returns to her native heath and 
writes the best stories of country life that the century has pro- 
duced. She had already shown her ability in this direction by 
the two idylls, La Mare au diable and Frangois le Champi. The 
third period (c. 1848-60) is then filled by her love of outdoor 
nature and country folk. La Petite Fadette illustrates the genre, 
with the fidelity of its beautiful description and its excellent 
psychology of simple hearts. Finally, a fourth period (1860-76) 
is mentioned by some critics and would include later miscella- 
neous novels. They are love-stories at large and show occasional 
signs of weariness. Of these, Nanon is a tale of the Revolution 
and Le Marquis de Villemer — the best of this period — deals 
capably with high life. 

It will be apparent that George Sand did many things. As 
opposed to Balzac, she is supposed to represent the " roman 
idealiste." Individualistic and passionate at first, she also helps 
create the social novel in her second period, attains her apogee 
with her country stories, and writes always with ease and often 
with eloquence. A tendency to over-idealize or romanticize and 
a lack of good composition are her worst faults. She was an 
improviser and admitted that she wrote simply by " turning* on 
the faucet.' ' But at her best she is widely sympathetic and 
interesting and conveys the sense of life in many ways. 



CHAPTER VII 
CRITICS AND HISTORIANS 

In general, Romanticism met with no formidable opposition, 
but there were several important writers who stand apart from 
The Reaction- tne mam currents of the period. Already under the 
aries: Empire, a group of critics were marked by their 

Jo rt conservative tendencies. Joseph Joubert (1754- 

1824) , a profound and delicate thinker, has been called " the 
critics' critic," since he won the admiration of Sainte-Beuve, 
Arnold and others. He led a simple and retired life, devoted 
mainly to the pleasures of friendship and conversation. In his 
stormier youth, he was influenced by Diderot and became the 
lifelong friend of Fontanes; from about 1800 Fontanes and 
Joubert together were the chief counselors of Chateaubriand. 
Joubert's single volume of Pensees (not published until 1838) 
is a series of crystallized meditations in the manner of the seven- 
teenth-century moralistes. The eighteenth century was severely 
judged by this Platonic idealist, who preserved a detached and 
serene soul through all the national upheavals. His literary 
judgments show true insight, but his form suffers from too much 
subtlety or too much condensation. Joubert was not really 
creative, and the future will probably find that he has been over- 
valued by the past. 

The " Catholic reaction," in which Lamartine and Chateau- 
briand participated, was headed, in the domain of theology 
Joseph de proper, by Joseph de Maistre and the Abbe de 
Maistre Lamennais. The former (1753-1821) was a 

" grand theoricien theocratique " and the first leader, under 
Napoleon, to demand the restoration of Catholicism. De 
Maistre was a semi-foreigner, a Savoyard by birth and resi- 
dence. He had the career of a magistrate and diplomat. He 
was strong for the principle of Papal authority, even infalli- 
bility {Du Pape, 1819), and he became a dominant figure among 
the Ultramontanes, the group that sought to subordinate the 

576 



THE CATHOLIC REACTION 577 

Gallican church to the power of Rome. His finest book is the 
Soirees de Saint-Petersbourg (1821), dialogues dealing with high 
spiritual problems. They are expressed in a clear logical form 
which owes much to the eighteenth century, whose principles 
De Maistre detested. His influence was at its height during 
the Second Empire and affected the virulent journalist, Veuillot, 
and the eccentric neo-romanticist, Barbey d'Aurevilly. Of a 
very different character was Joseph's brother, Xavier de Maistre, 
who wrote the sentimental and charming Voyage autour de ma 
chambre (1794). 

The Abbe de Lamennais (1782-1854), by his ardent and elo- 
quent nature and by his association with Chateaubriand and 

Lamartine, is more closely linked with literature. 
Lamennais . 

Like Chateaubriand, he came of a Breton family 

and environment and was endowed with certain traits of the 
" Northern " romantic imagination. A great reader in his 
youth, he passed through a stage of skepticism and was not 
ordained priest until 1816. The Essai sur Vindifjerence (1817- 
19) attracted much attention, and Lamennais was esteemed one 
of the Catholic leaders. His chief disciples were Lacordaire and 
Montalembert. The three writers founded, after the Revolution of 
July, a progressive journal called VAvenir, which became too 
liberal in the eyes of the Church. Lamennais was finally con- 
demned by the Pope and lost his power among the orthodox. He 
had previously published (1834) his Paroles d'un croyant, which 
remain the most individual expression of his fiery faith. Dog- 
matic and Ultramontane, Lamennais yet represented a fine 
effort to assimilate Catholic orthodoxy and democratic liberal- 
ism, and the effort wholly failed. His endeavor was to spirit- 
ualize the Church, working first from the top and then (after 
1830) from the bottom. The Essai sur Vindifjerence develops a 
theory of " certainty " as regards dogma, using the fallacious 
basis of universal historic testimony. The Paroles d'un croyant 
consist of highly imaginative parables and visions, written or 
chanted in a Biblical style. The book resembles its author in 
its alternation of tenderness and violent ardor, and thereby 
Lamennais clearly belongs to the Romantic generation. 

Under the Restoration, there were three gifted professors and 
lecturers who exercised a considerable influence upon French 



578 CRITICS AND HISTORIANS 

youth. This " trio of the Sorbonne " was composed of Villemain 
in criticism, Cousin in philosophy and Guizot in history. In their 
The Trio several fields, each of these men stood for a new 
Sorbonne: historical method, and all three were liberal-minded. 
Villemain Their eloquence was unsurpassed, while their best 
books were simply products of their courses. Abel Ville- 
main (1790-1870) emphasized social background and compara- 
tive literature. The value of his Tableau de la litter ature au 
moyen age has faded out since specialists have made a study 
of medieval documents, but his Tableau de la litter ature fran- 
gaise au XV II I e siecle (1828) still keeps its usefulness and in- 
terest. This work helped restore the eighteenth century to its 
proper place in the history of thought; it offered capital ex- 
amples of " literature as the expression of society " ; it used the 
method of comparisons and cross-influences (particularly from 
England) ; and it was written in a style of genuine if old- 
fashioned eloquence. Villemain had taste, judgment and knowl- 
edge. Together with Mme de Stael, he may be credited with 
founding nineteenth- century criticism. 

The talent of Victor Cousin (1792-1867) was less reliable. 
His life carried out his motto of " il f aut paraitre " ; he was con- 
c . stantly in evidence as a popular lecturer and edu- 

cator. Appointed professor of philosophy when quite 
young, he endeavored to fill the gaps in his training by trips to 
Germany and an enthusiasm for Hegel. His most important 
volume, Du Vrai, du Beau et du Bien (1853) was composed of 
courses delivered in 1818 and again in 1836. He received many 
public honors, influenced the mechanics of the French educa- 
tional system, and in his old age wrote a series of admiring 
volumes on his " amoureuses," such heroines of the seventeenth 
century as Mme de Longueville and Mme de Sable. Victor 
Cousin stands first for a new and significant emphasis on the his- 
tory of philosophy and, secondly, for the doctrine of Eclecticism, 
or the endeavor to combine into a working creed the best and 
most plausible portions of past systems. Revolting against the 
Empiricists (sensationalists) , he manufactured an unstable com- 
pound of Plato, Descartes and the German idealists. His eclectic 
synthesis is superficial and his method faulty. In aesthetics, he 
again approximates a Platonic idealism, an emotion which is the 



GUIZOT 579 

" pure sentiment of the beautiful and the sublime." More charac- 
teristic of his age is the fact that he recognizes the independ- 
ently creative role of the artist, and he is among the first to 
formulate the doctrine of " art for art's sake." He also belongs 
to his period by his capacity for feeling and inspiring Romantic 
enthusiasm and by his lack of deep reflective powers. 

Frangois-Pierre-Guillaume Guizot (1787-1874) was a more 
solid and serious person. A French Protestant by upbringing, 
Guizot: the he preserved throughout life the austerity of that sect. 
Man As teacher, historian and statesman, he was a leader 

of the " doctrinaires," the moderate liberals who stood as cham- 
pions of the bourgeoisie and of constitutional monarchy. Guizot 
was also a distinguished orator and publicist. He entered politics 
early, occupied various administrative positions after Waterloo, 
lost and regained his professorial chair and gave his epoch-making 
courses on civilization, 1828-30. Under Louis-Philippe, Guizot 
held several portfolios, was made ambassador to England and, 
joining the Opposition, ranked as minister of foreign affairs 
and head of the cabinet, 1841-48. In government he believed 
in the juste milieu, repressed democracy pure and simple, and 
constantly maintained that the upper middle class was the 
backbone of the nation. Similar views characterize his attitude 
towards history, which he tended to consider as an adjunct to 
practical politics. 

Nevertheless, Guizot is regarded by many as the greatest of 
French historians. In opposition to the 'Romantic school (see 
. , subsequent pages), he headed the political school, 
" whose object was rather to explain than to narrate, 
to teach than to paint " (Gooch) . Furthermore, Guizot's master- 
piece, the Histoire Generate de la Civilisation en Europe x inaugu- 
rated a fresh philosophy of history and revealed its author as 
the greatest generalizer since Montesquieu. As a universal his- 
tory, the work is more broadly based than that of Bossuet or 
even that of Montesquieu; it accepts the theory of Providence, 
but usually explains events as arising from human and social 
causes or the structure of governments. Guizot's forte is the 

1 Published with the accompanying work (Histoire Generate de la Civilisation en 
France) as a Cours oV Histoire moderne, in, 1828-30. Guizot also wrote a valuable 
Histoire de la Revolution d'Angleterre (1828) ; he was a profound admirer of Anglo- 
Saxon institutions. 



580 CRITICS AND HISTORIANS 

exposition of the underlying ideas of an epoch. For instance, 
he holds that the two main currents of modern civilization are 
the spirit of free inquiry and the struggle for liberty as warring 
with the slow centralization of power. Again, Guizot shows 
how the modern world amalgamated older elements from the 
Roman Empire, from the establishment of Christianity and 
Feudalism. The bourgeoisie incorporated the best progressive 
growth of the Middle Ages, and in the long run " its existence in- 
volved representative government." The Civilisation en France 
was intended to develop the thought that France, through her 
assimilative and radiating energy, exhibits the highest type of 
intellectual civilization. The lectures were unfortunately sus- 
pended before Guizot had passed the early Middle Ages, but he 
had revealed his ability to study the body politic as an organism 
and had strongly emphasized the national " unite morale " as 
rising above the conflict of classes. The author's cold reasoning 
and his sober style prevent any display of picturesque or dramatic 
talent. He is not dealing primarily with personalities or with 
facts in themselves and his books lack color. Sainte-Beuve de- 
clared that Guizot made everything too symmetrical and " en- 
chained," and the great critic, after reading the historian, would 
take down a volume of De Retz's Memoirs to remind himself 
how history was actually made. But Guizot, by his intellectual 
quality, by his impartiality and sure erudition, as well as by his 
establishment of the Societe de l'Histoire de France, ranks as 
the leader of this earlier generation in philosophic history, as 
Thierry was the master in the narrative kind. 

The imaginative qualities which Guizot lacked are to be 
found, even too abundantly, in the Romantic school of historians. 
The Michelet was profoundly influenced by the general 

Schoo?* 1C Romanticism of his period, and Thierry found his 
Thierry vocation through reading Chateaubriand's Martyrs. 

Scott and Chateaubriand, the one in his antiquarianism, the 
other in his poetizing of the Middle Ages, may be considered 
the godfathers of this school. Augustin Thierry (1796-1856) 
must be distinguished from his younger brother, Amedee, who 
wrote about the Gauls. Thierry began his career as the secre- 
tary of the eccentric social philosopher, Henri de Saint-Simon, 
from whom the historian may have partly derived his sympathy 



THIERRY 581 

with the masses. An interval of journalism and a systematic 
study of the sources of French history were followed by the pro- 
duction of two masterpieces, the Histoire de la conquete de 
VAngleterre par les Normands (1825) and the Recits des Temps 
Merovingiens (1840). Unlike other historical writers of the 
time, Thierry was neither a professor nor a politician. His health 
prevented any active life; from the age of thirty he was blind 
and partially paralytic; but these handicaps blighted neither 
his vital enthusiasm nor his capacity for labor. His was a fine 
character, courageous, simple and ardent. As a writer, he 
combines a genius for detail with a power to animate the whole 
record of a faded past. The result is a picturesque restoration 
of the early Middle Ages, an imaginative and colorful interpre- 
tation, which combines a true " intuition " of past sentiments 
and ideas with an ability to press out the storied life from 
charters and chronicles. So the Merovingian kings move vividly 
before our eyes, and the epic of the races takes form in their 
migrations. Thierry is among the first to emphasize intensive 
racialism (that fetish of the nineteenth century), and his Con- 
quete de VAngleterre over-stresses the Norman influences on Eng- 
lish social life. His narrative gift is excellent, he is a master 
of proportion in composition and of choice and moderate ex- 
pression in style. Thierry is the first to put history on a high 
literary plane. 

The Romantic qualities appear in their greatest efflorescence 
in the work of Jules Michelet, the " Victor Hugo of history.'' 
M> . . He came of the people and he was right in declar- 

ing, " je suis reste peuple." The poverty and pri- 
vations of his childhood left Michelet, as they left Dickens, 
with a warm sympathy for the masses and with some distrust 
of the world of society. As a boy, he sought relief from 
drudgery in visiting a certain Museum of French history, which 
gave him the first inspiration for his future work. He suc- 
ceeded in getting an education and was an avid reader. In 
1827 he translated the works of Vico, the Italian philosopher, 
and was appointed to teach at the Ecole Normale, where his 
causeries were much esteemed. Ten years later he passed to the 
College de France. As a consequence of an attack on the Jesuits 
he lost his professorial chair; he also lost his post in the national 



582 CRITICS AND HISTORIANS 

archives, when Napoleon III came into power. Discouraged 
and embittered against imperialism, Michelet won happiness 
again through the companionship and collaboration of his de- 
voted second wife. This is the epoch of his travels and of his 
curious volumes, semi-scientific, semi-mystical, on L'Oiseau, La 
Femme, La Bible de VHumanite. Michelet always kept some- 
thing of the feeling and enthusiasm of a child. Susceptible, 
kind-hearted and thoroughly good, he was rather a solitary, 
revealing his " winged spirit " only to his intimates or in his 
books. 

As for the Histoire de France, the composition of this work 
runs through all his mature life. Three separate parts are to 
"Histoire de be distinguished: six volumes on the Middle Ages, 
France" written from 1833-43; then Michelet's sudden leap 
to the Revolution, 1847-53; finally, the treatment of the inter- 
vening period {Renaissance et Temps modernes, eleven volumes, 
1855-67). The first part is Michelet's most perfect and har- 
monious work, written before his prejudices and imagination 
overcame him. His ardent patriotism and his tendency to sym- 
bolism made him view medieval France as a living person. 
His object is the " resurrection of the life of the past as a whole," 
and he succeeds in this through his gift of sympathetic imagina- 
tion, applied to the complex of institutions, events and person- 
alities. He believed that a great writer should understand and 
welcome eagerly " the diverse manifestations of the human 
spirit " (Monod) . The power of vision and expression thus 
attained is beyond anything in the range of French history 
hitherto. As Sainte-Beuve says, Michelet makes all other 
historians seem like compilers. Some of the outstanding fea- 
tures of the work are the famous survey of the French provinces 
(Michelet was the first to emphasize geographical history) ; 
the apotheosis of Joan of Arc as the soul of France; and the 
full-length depictions of Louis IX and Louis XL The writer's 
usual habit is to narrate by a succession of vivid scenes. The 
second part of the work was undertaken after Michelet's cam- 
paign against the Jesuits. It enthrones the Revolution as em- 
bodying, especially in its dawn, the hope of a humanity liberated 
from king and church. The people en masse can be viewed as 
the hero of the epic, and the people can do no wrong, in Miche- 



MICHELET 583 

let's view. At least, the mob spirit and the Terror are atten- 
uated, to the greater glory of Revolutionary principles and ideals. 
In brilliant tableaux (the Convocation of the States-General, 
the flight to Varennes, etc.) and in prophet-like demeanor, 
Michelet is rivaled only by Carlyle, whom he also resembles in 
various errors and faults of proportion. The third part of the 
Histoire shows this great talent in its decline. Bitter attacks 
on the old regime and the Catholic church, a tendency to credit 
scandalous memoirs and to over-estimate the small fact as 
determining history, are scarcely atoned for by the continuance 
of the author's wonted eloquence and power of depiction. There 
is too much propaganda and too little care and thought. Miche- 
let here exhales hatred and prejudice, and the four chief objects 
of his hatred, it has been well said, were priest, king, England 
and the bourgeoisie. 

But at his best, as an interpreter of the Middle Ages, Michelet 
is incomparable. Page after page contains fire and feeling, 
knowledge and insight. Like Thierry, he breathes 
upon musty documents and informs them with life. 
He was possessed of a " flamme interieure," which he communi- 
cates to ancient ages and to the reader as well. One of his ad- 
mirers, Monod, declares that Michelet remained the chief forti- 
fying and consoling force in the nation; that after 1830 he was 
almost the only example of continued Romantic idealism and 
optimism. He sought the original and striking features of an 
epoch, and his Histoire, in its mobile and fervent style, is most 
original and inimitable. He was too individual to found a 
school, but later historians admit their debt to his inspiration 
and admit his supremacy in the imaginative and emotional re- 
vivification of the past. Michelet was primarily an artist, who 
chose history as his working material. 

The work of Thiers and of Mignet, who belonged to the 
" political " rather than to the Romantic school, may be more 
Thiers and briefly considered. Adolphe Thiers' long and bril- 
Mignet ^ ant career (1797-1877) is closely connected with 

the destinies of his country. With Mignet, he founded Le 
National and helped expel the Bourbons in 1830. With Guizot, 
he shared the direction of the doctrinaire policy and alternated 
with him as leader of the cabinet and of the Opposition under 



584 CRITICS AND HISTORIANS 

Louis-Philippe. Thiers was partly responsible for the third 
Napoleon, but his great opportunity was found in the days of 
70-71, and his patriotic services then were rewarded by his 
election as the first President of the French Republic. As a his- 
torian he is not deep, shows political bias and neglects documen- 
tary sources. But his treatment is extremely clear and fresh. 
The Histoire de la Revolution frangaise (1823-27) was for long 
the most popular work on the subject. It shows a certain 
political opportunism and fatalism, but it is tolerably impartial 
and very readable, with its easy luminous style. The Histoire 
du Consulat et de VEmpire (1845-62) is a greater book and re- 
mains the most complete account of Napoleon, as it was a 
considerable factor in the restoration of the Napoleonic cult. 
Thiers was well equipped and experienced in matters of ad- 
ministration and diplomacy; he made special studies of finance, 
geography and battle-fields; his chief handicap is externality, 
a lack of the philosophic power with which Guizot was so 
abundantly endowed. Thiers' close friend, Mignet (1796- 
1884) has a higher place as an accurate and thoughtful 
historian. His Precis de la Revolution frangaise (1824) is still 
useful in its condensed and logical presentation of events. But 
Mignet is not an accomplished writer. His chief work, the 
Succession d'Espagne and the editing of documents relative to 
that subject, belongs to history as a science rather than to history 
as literature. 



BOOK VII 
REALISM 

CHAPTER I 

THE TRANSITION: BALZAC 

Honore de Balzac (1799-1850), in spite of the de which he 
inserted in his name, was of comparatively humble birth. He 
was of peasant stock on the side of his father, who 
seems to have endowed Honore with his strong 
physique and personality. The mother left him her taste for 
mystical reading (cf. Louis Lambert) ; also she paid his debts 
and often nagged him mercilessly. More sympathetic to the 
lad's ambitions was a sister, Laure, who was among Balzac's 
first biographers. Though the family was of Southern origin, 
Honore was born and spent his youth in the sunny country 
of Touraine, which he has glowingly celebrated in his fiction 
(Le Lys dans la vallee, Contes drolatiques) , and this environ- 
ment probably added to his Rabelaisian exuberance. At the 
College Vendome, near Tours, Balzac passed six years of hot- 
house discipline and promiscuous hard reading. His health was 
seriously affected for a time. Then he was sent to Paris, " pour 
faire son droit"; his law-studies and the notary who directed 
them appear conspicuously in his novels {Gobseck, Ulnterdic- 
tion). He was finally allowed to take a fling at literature, and 
we see him (1819) happily installed in the conventional garret 
and writing enthusiastically to his sister about his career — 
which he had not yet started. Some years of application re- 
sulted in ten melodramatic novels {GEuvres de jeunesse) ; these 
even Balzac would not sign. Desiring to make money rapidly, 
he became involved in a printing and publishing concern, which 
led to financial insolvency {Illusions perdues, Cesar Birotteau). 
The aristocratic Mme de Berny helped rescue him from this 
predicament and interested him in the epoch of the Revolution. 

585 



586 THE TRANSITION: BALZAC 

This was depicted in Les Chouans (1829), with which novel 
Balzac begins the famous series of the Comedie humaine. 

Les Chouans is significant because it marks the transition 
from the historical novel to the novel of contemporary manners. 
When the transition became complete, modern Realism was born. 
The Realistic tendency is still more pronounced in the early 
Scenes de la Vie Frivee, which included such important studies 
in actual life as Gobseck and the Cure de Tours. With the ap- 
pearance of such masterpieces (1833-34) as Eugenie Grandet, Le 
Pere Goriot and La Recherche de I'Absolu, Balzac's method of 
work may be considered as established. His enormous pro- 
ductivity has fairly begun. He is henceforth the " anchorite of 
labor " who toils for months together, from two in the morning 
all through the day, sustaining himself with black coffee and 
allowing an occasional holiday for Gargantuan meals and social 
pleasures. Balzac was well received in certain salons and deigned 
to pose as a social lion. But he lacked distinction and was never 
admitted to the Academy. He grew up in the society of the 
Restoration, which knew all the difficulties of " reconstruction " 
on a large scale. So his novels present many types of arrivistes 
(Rastignac, Rubempre) , who pass through various environments 
in their search for position and wealth. Owing to his perpetual 
need of money, Balzac was in changing relations with different 
publishers and theatrical directors ; he also found it wise to change 
his place of residence frequently, in order to avoid persistent 
creditors. He had fleeting affairs with various women, but the 
only true successor to Mme de Berny was a Polish lady, Mme 
Hanska. This affair began in 1833, was long maintained by 
scattered meetings and correspondence (Lettres a I'Etrangere) , 
caused sudden visits to Switzerland, Italy and the Ukraine, and 
was consummated in marriage just before the novelist's death. 
Though it ultimately ruined him, this passion fostered Balzac's 
talent and productive power. " Etre celebre et etre aime " were 
his two most steadfast desires. So we find him absorbing Pari- 
sian and provincial life, entertaining strange dreams of wealth, 
either through Sardinian mines or through dealings with the 
Great Mogul, becoming an amateur of bibelots and collections 
(Le Cousin Pons) , constantly binding himself over to publishers 
and pawning the future for the present. In this respect he re- 



HIS TEMPERAMENT 587 

sembled Sir Walter Scott, and the practical life of each was dam- 
aged by the writer's too liberal imagination. Like others, Balzac 
contracted to produce romans-feuilletons at top speed, and after 
1836 the results appear in some instances of hasty composition 
and style. Yet many of his best works (for example, Cesar 
Birotteau, 1837) were also written rapidly. It has been estimated 
that he made an average of almost twenty-five thousand francs 
yearly, and from 1845 his financial position became easier. By 
then all his efforts were directed toward marrying Mme Hanska 
and setting up a fine establishment in Paris. Trips to Russia, 
a long sickness, and disillusionment after marriage, precipitated 
the end. He died, literally worn out by life and labor, in August, 
1850. 

By nature, Balzac offers a curious compound of the idealist 
and the materialist. His powerful imagination, his sanguine 
T dreams of love and happiness, his (Swedenborgian) 

mysticism tended in the one direction; but his very 
physical being, his coarseness, his Rabelaisian and middle-class 
characteristics induced in him much gusto for the real world. 
By intuition he is a Romantic genius; by his extraordinary and 
detailed memory for the concrete, he is the founder of the Real- 
istic school. His two chief ideals, love and creative art, were 
stained by the money-making ambition. Exuberant and even 
titanic power is his special mark. No such industry and driving 
force had hitherto appeared in fiction. It led him into eruptions 
of gaiety and egotism, in which everything had to bend to his 
will, and in which the world of real people faded away before 
the huger reality of the Comedie humaine. It led him finally 
into that realm of hallucination and monomania in which he 
wrote his last imposing novels — Le Cousin Pons, La Cousine 
Bette. Numerous anecdotes show how for Balzac his visions be- 
came facts, and it is in the ultimate fusion of the real and the 
romantic that the secret of his spell resides. 

Besides his fiction, Balzac wrote several volumes of plays, arti- 
cles and miscellanea; but the Comedie humaine, the product of 
Plan of the twenty years' labor, stands out as his great achieve- 
humaine " ment. This collection includes about ninety-five 
separate titles of novels, novelettes and short stories. Over 
four million words and over two thousand characters, one-fourth 



588 THE TRANSITION: BALZAC 

of them " reappearing," were used in this vast scheme. Its central 
feature is the endeavor to present completely and concretely the 
social life of contemporary France: " completely," because Bal- 
zac's idea was to include every social category and most fields 
of knowledge ; " concretely," because Realism of detail and a close 
acquaintance with small bourgeois life were employed to an un- 
precedented extent; " contemporary," because the historical novel 
of the past is incidental in Balzac's work and he studies chiefly 
the modern epochs with which he had personal contact. It is in 
these three respects that he expands the novel far beyond the 
range attempted by Scott and Hugo. As early as the middle 
thirties he had determined his plan of social studies, had chosen 
his general title (as a counterpart to Dante's Divina Commedia), 
and had fixed on the device of reappearing and interlocking char- 
acters to mortice together his growing edifice. In the Avant- 
propos of 1842 he evinces his encyclopedic intention and his view 
of society as divisible into species according to profession and 
habitat. At least one-third of his titles {Le Medecin de Cam- 
pagne, La, Vieille fille, Les Employes, etc.) indicate this preoc- 
cupation with social types, which is further manifest from the 
divisions given to the Comedie. The first and largest Part is 
called " Etudes de Mceurs " and is subdivided into six kinds of 
Scenes: those pertaining respectively to the Vie privee, Vie de 
province, Vie Parisienne, Vie politique, Vie militaire and the. 
Vie de campagne. The second Part is called " Etudes Philo- 
sophiques," and the third, " Etudes Analytiques." These in- 
clude fewer titles and have no subdivisions; the intention here 
was more abstract — to deal with the causes and principles 
underlying society {La Recherche de VAbsolu, La Peau de 
chagrin, La Physiologie du manage) . To recur to the first Part, 
the various Scenes overlap in their content, which is not always 
logically subdivided; but Balzac's intention of becoming the 
" secretary of society," studied in its chief categories, is here 
fulfilled. We may mention a few samples under each heading. 
The Vie privee included ultimately the early novelettes dealing 
with modest bourgeois life {La Bourse, La Maison du Chat- 
qui'pelote), together with such fine character studies as Le 
Colonel Chabert and later full-length novels like Le Pere Goriot 
or Beatrix. The Vie de province contains Balzac's main attempt, 



HIS ROMANTICISM 589 

turgid and sentimental, to depict idealistie love — Le Lys dans 
la vallee; it also has the incomparable Eugenie Grandet, Pier- 
rette, the huge fresco of Illusions per dues, and others. The titles 
here cover four French provinces. The Vie Parisienne includes 
a parallel fresco of the metropolis — the Splendeurs et Miser es 
des courtisanes — and several novels of intrigue and business. 
The Vie politique has, for instance, Une Tenebreuse Affaire 
(mystery story) ; the Vie militaire has Les Chouans; and the 
Vie de campagne, appropriately includes Les Paysans, Le 
Medecin de campagne (ideal doctor) and Le Cure de village 
(ideal priest) . The last three Scenes embrace fewer titles than 
the first three, and it was Balzac's intention to enlarge their 
content. He planned in all one hundred and fifty novels. 
Several unwritten masterpieces were to gather around his hero 
Napoleon, and others, judging from the semi-autobiographical 
novels already mentioned, would undoubtedly have gathered 
around Balzac himself. 

As with his temperament, so we must consider Balzac's work 
in its Romantic and in its Realistic aspects. The origins of his 
Balzac's Romanticism are not far to seek. The English 

Romanticism « g chool of Terror " (Maturin and Lewis), the melo- 
drama of Pixerecourt, certain contemporary strains in Hugo or 
in Sue were not without influence. Balzac's own (Euvres de 
jeunesse (Argow le Pirate, Jane la Pale, etc.), which are fairly 
voluminous, teem with melodramatic incidents, violent deeds, 
missing heirs and mysterious characters. Consequently, the Co- 
medie humaine contains a revival of Maturing Melmoth ; a grue- 
some villain like Vautrin; sinister bands like that of the " Thir- 
teen "; piracy in La Femme de trente ans; crimes, vendettas and 
harrowing deaths in many novels. Apart from this bas-roman- 
tisme, there is also the more legitimate type, to be seen in Bal- 
zac's individualism : not only does he exhibit his heart and mind 
in many passages, but he preaches individualism in the careers 
of his male and female climbers (Rastignac, de Marsay, 
Valerie Marneffe). The exaltation of the imagination {Sera- 
phita, La Peau de chagrin), of passion (Veronique, Mme de 
Mortsauf, Esther van Gobseck), of the artistic life (Gambara, 
Illusions perdues) all have their Romantic bias. The delineation 
of such strong passions, rising to the point of mania, is often 



590 THE TRANSITION: BALZAC 

fine and stirring; but pathos is not usually Balzac's forte. Again, 
his descriptive processes are often those of the Romantic painter. 
Except in Le Lys dans la vallee, he scarcely treats nature in an 
idealistic way; nor is he prone to use Catholicism other than as 
a desirable discipline. This is replaced by the somewhat mate- 
rial and exaggerated mysticism of Louis Lambert and Seraphita. 
Exaggeration and excess were, unfortunately, two Romantic 
temptations to which Balzac fell an easy prey. The thick 
coloring of his style in " purple passages," the millions of 
francs with which he suddenly endows his leading characters, 
the agonizing death-beds, and especially the growing effect 
of hallucinations in his own mind, the huge mushrooms of many 
midnights of toil — all these are symptoms of the Romantic 
fever. 

But as a whole the Comedie humaine is the earliest and still 
the most conspicuous monument of French Realism. We may 
Realistic define Realism as the art of representing actuality, 
Features viewed largely from the material standpoint, in a 
way to produce as closely as possible the impression of truth. 
What then are the chief Realistic qualities and elements in the 
work of Balzac? As regards truth, it would seem that his 
deliberate pessimism, his exaggerations in plot and incident, and 
his use of grandiose monomaniacs as characters, would be 
" romantic." But his careful verisimilitude gives nevertheless 
the impression of reality, and we feel that most of the Comedie 
humaine has actually happened. This is undoubtedly because 
Balzac conceives his novels with an intense and powerful vision. 
He leans towards materialism, which is his second Realistic 
quality — the .emphasis on force, food, money and concrete 
objects. He especially stressed various material occupations: 
physical living, which depends upon eating, which depends upon 
money, which depends upon work in trade or profession. The 
space given to money and business affairs is among Balzac's 
most notable features, and his knowledge of this field seems 
comprehensive. The insistence on material things is also ap- 
parent, not only in the long descriptions of furniture and the 
like, but in the fact that a mere object (a purse, a crucifix) is 
often made a pivot in the plot. Again, it seems materialistic 
that so many of his characters have analogies with the animal 



HIS REALISM 591 

world. The very idea of social species came to him, as he says, 
from a comparison " entre l'humamte et l'animalite," and 
throughout he sustains the comparison and insists upon the re- 
semblance between men and beasts. Allied to this trait is the 
attention paid to science, especially the modifications of charac- 
ter due to environment, topography, physiology or pathology. 
Certain pseudo-sciences, such as mesmerism, also figure largely. 
Balzac's " encyclopedic zeal " finds expression in documen- 
tation and in breadth of treatment. Two kinds of documents 
appear: technical disquisitions by the author, with display of 
erudition in many fields; or the use of such actual documents 
as a military proclamation or a business prospectus. Conscien- 
tious researches (enquetes) often seem inorganic as regards the 
story proper, but add to the fullness of background and the 
sense of reality. The breadth of treatment (Realistic uni- 
versality) seems to ignore nothing in contemporary life and is 
conspicuous in Balzac's elaborate introductions. Some tedious- 
ness results from such long-winded descriptions and expositions. 
One finds also a tendency towards mediocrity and triviality of 
representation, but in this respect Balzac sins less than his 
successors, and many even believe that he attains his greatest 
effects in the depiction of mediocre and ordinary lives. He is 
not so successful in etching true aristocrats and people of refined 
breeding. He was a Royalist and something of a tuft-hunter, 
yet his vision of manifold democracy is perhaps the best, em- 
bodiment of the mingled art and truth of the Comedie humaine. 
All in all, he attains a solidity of effect, of workmanship, of 
cumulative power that is simply incomparable. But among his 
Realistic virtues we can include neither a thoroughly sym- 
pathetic heart (such as the Russians have) nor the impartial 
and impersonal attitude of Flaubert and the later school. Balzac 
is perpetually intruding himself into the story. The sociological 
aspect already developed, the amount of delineation by classes 
and types, is the crowning conception of this Realist. 

Other features of his method will appear from a considera- 
tion of such fictional elements as exposition, plot and character- 
Method ization. A Balzacian exposition, like the head of a 
comet, bulks very large and frequently tries the 
patience of the reader. Often fifteen or twenty per cent of the 



592 THE TRANSITION: BALZAC 

whole novel will be devoted to preambles, topographical, socio- 
historical, biographical or generally descriptive. At times 
(Eugenie Grandet, Pere Goriot) this expository manner is logi- 
cal, progressive and valuable for an understanding of the whole. 
At other times (throughout the Medecin de cdmpagne and the 
Cure de village) there are too many unorganized disquisitions. 
In about one-third of his stories, Balzac uses the method of 
beginning with action, in medias res, and then returns to solid 
exposition. He uses the first-person form of narration almost as 
frequently, and both of these devices are evidently intended to 
vitalize the heavy material. 

His plots are rather complex in the conspiracy-novel (roman- 
complot) as well as in the large frescoes, where it is a question 
of depicting various social groups. The study of many milieux, 
both for their historical value and as influencing character, 
is very important in his scheme. But when the exhibition of 
one salient character is the main thing, then the plot tends 
towards simplification and a progressive accumulation of in- 
cidents. The roman-complot itself usually revolves around the 
doing to death of some particular martyr: examples are Cousin 
Pons, Pierrette and Colonel Chabert. In the character-novel 
also, the protagonist is often done to death, but rather by his 
or her own fault; some mischievous mania obsesses and finally 
destroys the person. Examples are Cesar Birotteau, led astray 
by his ambitions; Balthazar Claes, whose passion for research 
ruins his family life and ultimately his whole morale; Baron 
Hulot, disintegrated by libertinism; Goriot, with his excessive 
paternal devotion. Such plots frequently present grandiose char- 
acters, analogous to Shakespeare's passion-ridden heroes, and 
with Balzac too we may find the " ruling passion strong in death." 
So the miser Grandet clutches on his death-bed at the golden 
crucifix, and so Claes ends his illusory search with the cry of 
"Eureka!'' Impressive as these monomaniacs are, solidly as 
they are built up, they seem less humanly real than the host 
of more average characters, belonging to every grade, profes- 
sion and moral stratum, which swarm through the Comedie 
humaine. Balzac often constructs his character around a defi- 
nite keynote or central personal trait (cf. La Bruyere). Thus 
Cesar Birotteau is described as a large sanguine son of a peasant, 



STYLE AND INFLUENCE 593 

and this role he maintains throughout. His costume, his physique, 
his deeds must correspond to this initial characterization. A 
similar use of harmony is found in most of Balzac's descriptions, 
whether of person or place, and together with this is found a 
process of accumulation of points along the definite line sug- 
gested by the keynote. The " maison Vauquer " breathes an 
atmosphere of wretched poverty: each room, each article of 
furniture, the aspect of each boarder must contribute to 
the total effect. At the same time, each boarder has his or her 
distinctive individuality, to be reinforced through the de- 
tails of costume, personal habit, biography and manner of 
speech. For example, Poiret is a machine and everything 
about him is mechanical. Small wonder that Balzac needed 
miles of descriptive matter and that his details — character- 
istic, causal or cumulative — appear as numerous as stars in 
the sky! 

Most cultivated critics have held that Balzac does not write 
well, that his style is too cumbersome, materialistic, sometimes 
Style and absurd and pedantic. Lapses of various kinds can 
Influence certainly be found. But granted the nature of his 
material — and his own nature — it is difficult to see how 
another medium could be employed. He marches " with huge 
feet fairly plowing the sand of our desert " (Henry James) , 
and his style labors onward with him. In the best narrative 
portions it can be swift, unpretentious, direct; when he tries 
fine writing, he usually and ridiculously fails; but at certain 
puissant moments, the " efflorescence " of his style rises to 
heights of delineation and passion. In appropriate figures of 
speech and in characteristic dialogue, he is not found want- 
ing. Thus his style is as variable as his subject-matter, 
but it too frequently lacks distinction — just as his depiction 
of fine women often lacks delicacy. In this, as in other re- 
spects, he inaugurates the rule of force and displaces that of 
beauty. 

The influence of Balzac has no limitations or end. He simply 
transformed fiction and made the modern novel the most com- 
prehensive literary vehicle. Important novelists in many coun- 
tries have recognized his leadership. Henry James, primarily 
a psychologist, calls him " the master of us all "; George Moore, 



594 THE TRANSITION: BALZAC 

though a dilettante, has written a wonderful tribute to the 
reality of the Comedie humaine; as for his Realistic successors, 
their name is legion throughout Europe and America (see 
Chapters IV and V, below). This predominance, together with 
his expansive and titanic power, goes far towards ranking Balzac 
as the greatest novelist of all time. 









CHAPTER II 
AUGIER, DUMAS FILS AND HENRY BECQUE 

The year which saw the failure of Hugo's Bur graves (1843) 
also saw an attempted revival of Classical tragedy in Ponsard's 
Ponsardand Lucrece. In this and in more modern subjects, 
Scribe Ponsard represents, in opposition to Romanticism, 

the so-called school of " bon sens." But his drama was color- 
less and short-lived. More important historically was the 
varied productivity of Eugene Scribe (1791-1861), who occu- 
pied the post of chief entertainer during the first half of the 
century. Scribe created the modern vaudeville, or light comedy 
of intrigue, and his mechanical dexterity furnished many of the 
elements of the " well-made play," whose formula still subsists. 
Neo-classical comedy, under the Empire, was but a bare skele- 
ton which Scribe undertook to vitalize by a system which both 
suspends and complicates the interest; he introduced much in 
the way of devices, preparations and stage-business. But Scribe 
scarcely belongs to literature. He was a vulgar author, depict- 
ing superficially a vulgar bourgeoisie. His characters are sil- 
houettes, his style crass and incorrect, and his ideals center 
around money-marriages. His vogue marks the fact that pure 
tragedy is dead and that comedy, light or serious, will hence- 
forth occupy itself with clever plots and with contemporary life. 
Successors to Scribe, under the Second Empire, were Emile 
Labiche (Le Voyage de Monsieur Perrichon, etc., etc.), whose 
gay talent and fertility found a suitable outlet in the vaudeville; 
and Meilhac and Halevy, who wrote sparkling librettos for 
Offenbach's operas. 

Serious Realistic comedy was undertaken by Emile Augier 

(1820-89), who owes something to Scribe and to Ponsard. 

Augier Augier led an even, prosperous life as a Parisian 

bourgeois of the better sort, and his career was 

marked by almost unbroken successes with critics and public 

595 



596 AUGIER, DUMAS FILS, HENRY BECQUE 

alike. For a generation his name predominated in the repertoire 
of the Cornedie-Frangaise. lie wrote, partly in collaboration, 
twenty-seven plays, roughly divisible into three groups. The 
earliest group contains dramas written for the most part in 
mediocre verse and including fanciful or remote subjects: La 
Cigue (1844) imitates the antique in the manner of Ponsard; 
L'Aventuriere (Padua, sixteenth century) presents already one 
of Augier's main theses, that the adventuress is the enemy of 
the family. More significant is Gabrielle (1849), which de- 
nounces the doctrine of Romantic escape in free love. By sen- 
sible arguments the heroine is won back to her husband, whom 
she thus apostrophises: 

pere de famille, 6 poete, je t'aime! 

The dramatist seems to conceive of poetry as a domestic virtue. 

In his second period, Augier establishes himself as a writer 
of excellent comedies de mwurs, a modern though inferior 
Moliere. The famous Gendre de M. Poirier (1854) recalls the 
Bourgeois Gentilhomme in the aspirations of its hero, in the 
blend of sense and humor, and especially in the deft balancing 
of characters, scenes and forces. The Manage d'Olympe, in- 
tended as an answer to the Dame aux Camelias, again denounces 
and punishes the courtesan who has invaded an honorable 
family. In fact, the family and marriage are now the chief 
concerns of Augier: a marriage must be properly established 
(Ceinture doree) , or it must be safeguarded (Poirier) , or it must 
be broken up, if unsuitable {Manage d'Olympe) . 

Augier's third period consists mainly of " social comedy," a 
broader development of the comedy of manners. Either the fam- 
ily is viewed as part of the organism of society or widespread 
social defects (money-rule, luxury, clericalism and corruption of 
the press) are portrayed on an ample scale. Luxury and venal 
love are strongly depicted in Les Lionnes pauvres; Maitre Guenn 
presents the unscrupulous man of affairs who always remains 
within the law; Les Efjrontes and its sequel, Le Fils de Gib oyer 
(1862), deal with political and clerical intrigue and give us a 
new type in Giboyer, the indurated journalist. Like Figaro, 
this personage has had a variegated career; he represents the 
proletariat and a sort of socialism. The dramatist appropriately 



AUGIER'S QUALITIES 597 

concluded his career with Mme Caverlet, a play concerning di- 
vorce, and with Les Fourchambault (1878), a large tableau of 
family complications. 

In Augier's drama we have something like a less elaborate 
and more moral Comedie humaine. He stages a history of the 
His bourgeoisie under the Second Empire. His social 

Qualities purview covers the new struggle of classes, the ques- 
tions of patriotism and clericalism, several varieties of the money 
question, and marriage with all its adjuncts (love, dowry, tri- 
angles, children, divorce) . His Realism appears in this compre- 
hensiveness, as also in a certain impartiality and impersonality of 
treatment; in contrast to Dumas fils, Augier rarely intervenes 
with sermons, and events of his own life are apparently not 
dramatized. His careful massing of background (Mariage 
d'Olympe, etc.,) is again Realistic, and so is the use of small in- 
cidents and objects. The characters, many of whom stand on 
their feet as solid and salient types, are gradually and distinctly 
built up. Thus Augier is a psychological Realist as well. People 
like Poirier, Olympe and Vernouillet are not easily forgotten. The 
ideas of Augier are anti-romantic and sensible from the stand- 
point of average living. He is never mystical or passionate, he 
does not understand or employ the grander sweeps of passion, 
emotion, religion or speculative thought. Unoriginal, sane and 
healthy, he is a good representative of the best bourgeois spirit 
as well as of an excellent dramatic tradition. His technique is 
occasionally conventional in the use of stage tricks, in concessions 
regarding the heart- interest and happy endings; but he is rich 
in situations and scenes, while his gestures and single speeches 
(mots de situation) are often telling. Augier and Dumas fils to- 
gether establish the Realistic drama in their successful endeavor 
" de porter au theatre une peinture exacte de l'humanite, et des 
cas de conscience." 

More impassioned and personal than Augier, more of a preacher 
and a genius was Alexandre Dumas fils (1824-1895), who as a 
natural son of his Romantic father would readily 
umas s ^ urn to dramatic paths. After a rather unhappy 
boyhood in a boarding-school, he was taken under the wing of 
the elder Dumas and shown certain varieties of gay life. But 
having no pronounced taste for dissipation and being considerably 



598 AUGIER, DUMAS FILS, HENRY BECQUE 

in debt, the son turned to literature and first to novel writing 
{La Dame aux Camelias, etc.). A dramatic version of this story 
started his career as a playwright, which continued until 1887 
and included sixteen plays. Dumas fils was made an Academi- 
cian and became quite a figure in society, in spite of frail health. 
Among his friends he was noted for his penetrating wit and his 
essentially upright character. He took up several social causes, 
defending the rights of natural children as well as more liberal 
divorce laws. The Naquet divorce bill (1884) was passed 
largely through Dumas' influence. In many of his earlier plays, 
his own experiences, contemporary events and personages appear, 
though with adequate disguise. Two opposing tendencies dom- 
inate his later work — good Realistic technique versus a moral- 
izing and sermonizing habit which grew on him. Thus an intense 
and concrete vision of " l'homme social " wars with the piece a 
these (the problem-play with a dogmatic solution), which he 
virtually creates. His drama is abundantly moral but it seems 
risque and cynical in that he usually deals with the divagations 
of love in high life. 

It is perhaps unfortunate that Dumas fils is still largely known 
to the Anglo-Saxon public as the author of " Camille " or La 
Dame aux Camelias (1852) . This play is Romantic 
in theme — a courtesan " rehabilitated " or purified 
by a great love — and exhibits a youthful ardor not found else- 
where in Dumas' work. More characteristic of his true manner 
is the careful rendering of Marguerite Gautier's milieu. Similarly, 
in Le Demi-monde (1855) all that concerns the shady setting 
is masterfully handled, and in this respect Dumas is an initiator. 
The heroine, Suzanne d'Ange, is among the first of modern 
vampires, and Olivier de Jalin is the author's favorite type of 
raisonneur hero. The trick by which the latter deceives and 
frustrates Suzanne has been severely criticized. First-hand 
knowledge of Parisian life is also found in two subsequent plays, 
Le Fere prodigue and Le Fils naturel — the titles of which are 
evidently applicable to the two Dumas. In La Question d 'argent 
(1857), Realistic drama takes a distinct step forward in the 
presentation of business affairs and of the unscrupulous million- 
aire, Jean Giraud. Money is as conspicuous as in Balzac, and 
yet the author is at pains to show that it cannot conquer esteem 



DUMAS' TRAITS 599 

or love. His disposition to moralize begins to be notable in this 
play and comes to a climax in Les Idees de Mine Aubray (1867) , 
in which theories of Christian charity are placed in opposition 
to maternal affection. Other plays of this last period are: L'Ami 
des femmes, a complicated diatribe against irresponsible women ; 
La Femme de Claude, in which another vampire meets death in 
the author's " revolver reaction against Romanticism;" L'Etran- 
gere, which is good melodrama; Denise and Francillon, which 
again display Parisian women in no favorable light. 

The fact is that neither Dumas' men nor his women are of 
heroic mold; the women are usually viewed either as seductive 
Characters perils or as empty-headed playthings; the men are 
Character- wea ^, selfish and voluptuous. The only type ad- 
istics mired by the author is that of the raisonneur — the 

cynical and clever man of the world, who understands, explains 
and manipulates the other characters, not usually for his own 
benefit (Rene de Charzay, Olivier de Jalin and the hero of U Ami 
des femmes). But all of these types — pleasure-seekers, feeble 
parents, hard young men and girls — are set forth with precision 
and logic. These two qualities are marked in all of Dumas' 
processes: precision and logic produce the clear-cut effect of his 
style and appear in his salient epigrams; they also characterize 
his plot-construction, which is closely knit together and de- 
velops like a mathematical demonstration. The plots progress 
not by Augier's balance of forces, but by straight logic to an 
inevitable conclusion. The use of " seeds " or preparations and 
of dove-tailing, cumulative scenes is conspicuous. A certain 
balance, however, is found in the fact that the sub-plots often 
doubly illustrate the main theme: two groups of people, respec- 
tively more advanced and less advanced in years than the main 
protagonists, are involved with the same general problem (for 
example, La Question d' argent, Le Demi-monde) . These several 
features of Dumas' method are not all Realistic ; in fact his logic 
sometimes operates to the detriment of his Realism, and the same 
is true of his preachments. For instance, in too many plays a 
character steps out of the picture to moralize its message; in 
others, probabilities and persons are forced in order to convey 
the moral. Characters become more and more mouthpieces 
of the author and are even allegorical symbols: one man has been 



600 AUGIER, DUMAS FILS, HENRY BECQUE 

dubbed Conscience, one woman is Passion, Olivier de Jalin is 
Friendship and Mme Aubray the Gospel. Dumas' theory of the 
" theatre utile " damaged his dramatic illusion and his artistic 
verity. 

Yet, all in all, he is a convinced and capable Realist, and his 
dramatic skill and power are often beyond praise. Intensity 
and vibrant sincerity set him above Augier, whom he also sur- 
passes in imaginative force and feeling. But he is inferior to 
Augier in breadth of treatment and in poise. Dumas is Real- 
istic in his penetrating and unsparing delineations of Parisian 
society, the deft natural touches in dialogue and in stage-busi- 
ness, and the slow painstaking reproduction of all that concerns 
background and the gradual evolution of character. In spite 
of some fixed ideas and habits, he remains a creative, earnest 
dramatist of very nearly the first order, essentially French in 
his subjects and viewpoints, his coruscating wit, psychological 
insight and knowledge of theatrical resource. 

Dumas' most noteworthy successor, after Realism had passed 
into Naturalism, was Henry Becque (1837-1899). Becque 
B goes further than Dumas in the direction of pessi- 

mism, in a sort of brutal photography and in sharp 
concise technique. These are his main qualities, which may 
have resulted in part from the disappointments of his life: he 
failed on the Bourse and in journalism, and his plays were not 
really successful until his name became identified with the 
Theatre Antoine (see Bk. IX, Ch. II). Michel Pauper (1870) 
reveals the sources of Becque's pessimistic power. The drama 
concerns an inventive workman. The effect of his lonely de- 
spair in conflict with capitalism is very strong. Certain minor 
plays preceded Les Corbeaux (1882) which is Becque's mas- 
terpiece and probably the best play produced by the Nat- 
uralistic movement. The Vigneron family is suddenly left 
without a head and father; the four helpless women are about 
to be victimized by the birds of prey (lawyer, notary, creditors) 
who descend upon the house. The chief " corbeau " agrees to 
defend the women from the other rascals, if the second daughter 
will marry him ; he tells her, " Vous etes entouree de fripons, 
mon enfant." The drama gives a great impression of reality, 
done with contained irony. Becque expresses himself without 



BECQUE'S NATURALISM 601 

exaggeration or sympathy; his tone is that of cold disgust. He 
stands for the " slice of life " theory, according to which the 
absolute verity of the single scene, with carefully chosen, biting 
dialogue, is of more importance than the total composition. 
Finally, in La Parisienne (1885), we have a portrait of the 
light-hearted woman who vibrates from one lover to another, 
because her first choice behaves too much like a husband. La 
Parisienne, even more than Les Corbeaux, represents the perfect 
" slice of life " with its return at the end to the original situation. 
Apart from photography and pessimism, Becque's Naturalism 
is also seen in the exactness of his ironic " studies," especially 
in matters of business. Affairs are affairs for him — and he 
learned them on the Bourse. The influence of money is con- 
stantly shown, often in petty ways. His intense though partial 
vision of reality is heightened by his dramatic short cuts and 
concentration. He and his school strive for an " integral 
Realism," the core of a situation or of a character, presented 
in a condensed dialogue that is bare of ornament. Becque is an 
artist in ugliness. He has a tragic power that is found neither 
in Augier nor in Dumas. In technique, he is more Naturalistic 
than these two men, for he revolts against the devices which 
they had inherited from Scribe. Henry Becque has been a 
strong influence upon the younger generation of dramatists 
(see Bk. IX, Ch. II). 



t 



CHAPTER III 

THE REACTION IN POETRY: 
BAUDELAIRE AND THE PARNASSIANS 

The year 1857 was a notable date in French letters. It was 
marked by the appearance of Dumas' Question d'argent, of 
Baudelaire Flaubert's Madame Bovary and of Baudelaire's 
Fleurs du mat. Partly a successor to the Romantic 
poets, partly in revolt against their doctrines, Charles Baudelaire 
(1821-67) crowded into his short life the elements of dissipation 
and of spiritual travail which find intense expression in his single 
volume of verse. A rebel against domestic restraint, against 
scholastic discipline, against any respectable career or behavior, 
he found himself at twenty a dandy of the Latin Quarter, in 
possession of a small fortune. This he quickly spent. Involved 
in debts and in an unfortunate liaison, he tried art-criticism 
and journalism, writing up two of the yearly " Salons," and pro- 
ducing at intervals (1856-65) his remarkable translation of Edgar 
Allan Poe, whose tales he made known to Europe. The publica- 
tion of the Fleurs du mal engaged Baudelaire in a lawsuit which 
caused a certain scandal. But the poet was honored by his 
brother artists (Gautier and Banville), and his position seemed 
secure. Unfortunately, his health was already undermined. 
He shortly made the mistake of trying to live in Belgium, 
a country which he found unsympathetic; there he was stricken 
with paralysis, and he returned to die in Paris. 

Baudelaire's strange physiognomy, like that of a shady priest 
or a seedy actor, was borne out by a wilful singularity in charac- 
ter and behavior. Desiring to astonish, over-fond of mystifica- 
tions, he was deliberately irregular in costume, language and 
opinions. Behind his cold and disturbing mask, he indulged 
tastes for debauchery, wine and hashish; and he sometimes exag- 
gerated his perversity to the point of Satanism. Yet he had 
strong spiritual reactions and was influenced by an ideal love. 

' 602 ,, ^ 



LES FLEURS DU MAL 603 

These opposing forces vie with one another throughout the 
Fleurs du mat and are crystallized in the great line: 

Dans la brute assoupie un ange se reveille. 

A number of these poems had appeared first in the reviews. 
The title chosen for the volume was meant to " epater le bour- 
"Les Fleurs geois " and is not very suitable; Spleen et Ideal (a 
du Mai" sub-title) is more exact. The book has no central 
plan, except as it depicts the successive soul-states of the author. 
The essential duality of his nature produces, on the one hand, 
many evidences of Catholic mysticism: repentance, desire for 
atonement, appeals to the Lord, a churchly vocabulary and rem- 
iniscences, a liking for ritual and hymns ; on the other hand, the 
poetry of revolt finds expression in tributes to Satan or to Cain 
and in complacent descriptions of debauchery and horrors. Ado- 
ration for Madonnas and a pure earthly love are at variance 
with Realistic impressions of " une horrible Juive," of corpses, 
of creepy sunsets and of Les petites Vieilles. Ennui and spleen, 
mulattos and cats, " artificial paradises " and other artificiali- 
ties, white nights, sumptuous imaginings, and fervent solemn 
religious prostrations, make a curious jangle in Baudelaire's 
" cracked soul " (La Cloche felee). But whatever the material, 
the projection of the poet's inner life is always powerful and in- 
tense. His form is masterly and original, while the " new 
shudder " upon which Hugo congratulated him applies as much 
to the poetic transcription as to the sinister subjects treated. 

The poems are mostly short, comprised within a page or two, 
and the irregular sonnet form (see UEnnemi) is a favorite. 
Formal This brevity was partly inspired by Poe, who 

Merits a j so seems responsible for some use of the repe- 

tend and the refrain. Baudelaire reacts against the Romantic 
theories of facile inspiration and effusiveness, and he takes 
few of the Romantic liberties; he is sparing in his use 
of enjambement, of rich or rare rimes. He employs mainly 
the Classic mold, into which he pours his unusual sub- 
stance. His Alexandrines are more full and sonorous than 
those of any Romantic poet. He is the master of a certain 
organ-roll, aided by polysyllables, enumerations and a plenitude 
of effect which has been aptly likened to a Beethoven symphony: 



604 THE REACTION IN POETRY 

Je sais que vous gardez une place au poete 
Dans les rangs bienheureux des saintes Legions, 
Et que vous l'invitez a l'eternelle fete 
Des Trones, des Vertus, des Dominations. 

His images are original and readily visualized ; we see the woman 
who sails along like a " beau navire " or the wounded man who 
lies under a pile of corpses, 

Et qui meurt, sans bouger, dans d'immenses efforts. 

Baudelaire also makes an excellent use of antithesis, and his 
epithets are striking, suggestive and sometimes paradoxical 
(" aimable pestilence ") . He chooses his words with unerring 
care and artistic restraint. Perhaps his most important quality 
is a power of concentration and condensation, visible in the total 
plan of the poem as well as in single verses. Therefore certain 
of his lines are memorable and of a lapidary perfection — 

La musique souvent me prend comme une mer. 

L 'empire familier dee tenebres futures. 

Les parfums, les couleurs et les sons se repondent. 

The last quotation illustrates Baudelaire's conception of sense- 
transference or of certain correspondences between the arts, a 
theory which he did not push to the extreme of the later Symbol- 
ists (see Bk. IX, Ch. III). His own senses were very keen. His 
thorough acquaintance with painting and with music, his love 
for Delacroix and his early appreciation of Tannhauser, will 
account for such perfect tableaux as Don Juan aux enfers and 
for the orchestral effect already mentioned. Such a couplet as 

Je hais le mouvement qui deplace les lignes 
Et jamais je ne pleure et jamais je ne ris, 

indicates an impassivity rebutted by such a prayer as 

Ah! Seigneur, donnez-moi la force et le courage 
De contempler mon cceur et mon corps sans degout. 

Baudelaire never had this " force and courage." Consequently 
his poetic expression is limited to a few ideas and to a single 
deep furrow plowed in the lyric field. But his form and his 
virtues are Classical, and Baudelaire is already a classic. He 



THE PARNASSIANS 605 

was a sufficiently great artist to universalize his personal ex- 
perience, to subject his reality to a lifting and transmuting power, 
and thereby to say certain sorrowful things once for all. 

Baudelaire represented the decay of Romanticism in his 
morbidity and taste for extremes ; he was like his " maitre im- 
Banville peccable," Gautier, in linking the two major obses- 

sions of death and voluptuousness. Romantic de- 
votion to technique reaches its climax in Theodore de Banville 
(1823-91), a clever and sometimes a charming manipulator of 
rimes and rhythms. His numerous volumes, from Les Caria- 
tides through the Trente-six ballades joyeuses, show facility;, 
verve and a sense of beauty which, however, he is inclined to 
make an " article de Paris." He is mainly occupied with cele- 
brating lovely ladies in sparkling odes, triolets and other set 
forms. Banville has dexterity without depth. 

The pressure of the new Realistic forces, particularly as re- 
gards science and the objective attitude towards history and 
"La Parnasse" nature, impinges on poetry in the work of the Par- 
nassians. The activity of these poets was brought 
to a focus in the collection called he Parnasse contemporain 1 
(1866, 1869 f.) which gave its name to the school. The group 
started with diverse talents and aims, but with a common desire 
for faultless artistic workmanship. Some of the early founders 
(Catulle Mendes, Glatigny, etc.,) never made a profound mark; 
others began as Parnassians and ended as something else. This 
was the case with Sully Prudhomme, Frangois Coppee and 
Verlaine (see Bk. IX, Ch. III). The term " Parnassiens " 
came to connote an Olympian calm, which these young writers 
affected; they were averse to Romantic storm, stress and sub- 
jectivism; for similar reasons they were also known as "les 
Impassibles." For a time they all submitted to the influence 
of a strong chieftain who gave direction and body to the move- 
ment. 

This leader was Leconte de Lisle (1818-94), who ranks as the 
foremost poet of his epoch both in thought and in expression. 
Leconte de He was of exotic birth, coming from the Ile-de- 
Lisle Bourbon, near Madagascar. Tropical scenery and 

emotions appear in the few poems that commemorate his youth, 

1 The name evidently proceeds from Mount Parnassus, the home of the Mueea. 



606 THE REACTION IN POETRY 

during which period he took a long voyage in the East. He 
was brought up severely, presently sent to France, and compelled 
to study law at Rennes. Finally he settled in Paris, where he 
supported himself by teaching and by translations. He was 
poor and proud, leading a life in which the chief events were 
extensive studies, volumes of poetry and intercourse with a 
few friends. After the publication of the first Parnasse con- 
temporain, Leconte de Lisle became the head of the group, but 
before that he had published several of his most distinctive 
volumes: Poemes antiques (1852), Poetries barbares (1862). 
He also made excellent translations from Homer, Theocritus and 
the Greek dramatists, an activity which helped his art rather 
than his financial status. Official recognition came with his 
appointment as assistant librarian at the Luxembourg and with 
his election to the Academy in 1886. He was never widely 
popular. His last collections were the Poemes tragiques (1884) 
and the Derniers poemes (1895). 

All of these volumes are written in much the same manner 
and are to be distinguished chiefly by the range of periods 
which they illustrate. Victor Hugo also was reflecting the trend 
of the times by subduing emotion and seeking historical sub- 
jects. Leconte de Lisle's conception is similar to that of the 
Legende des siecles (which his first volume antedates), in that 
he records the creeds and destinies of various races and eras, 
taken in their most expressive types or at their culminating 
point. But he emphasizes more the element of religious thought, 
and he often uses the Greek material and manner, which Hugo 
rarely employs. In his version of the epic of humanity, the Par- 
nassian poet shows a historical rather than an imaginative 
approach, and he manifests a scientific approach in the wideness 
and exactness of his knowledge. In fact, he is opposed to the 
general looseness of the Romanticists, to their exploitation of self, 
to their sentiment and rose-color, as well as to their interpre- 
tation of nature and their ignorance of the sciences. His quali- 
ties are the direct contrary of these; and among them we may 
consider first his objectivity. 

His Leconte de Lisle puts the least possible of himself 

Qualities j n ^ fc^ work. He strives to minimize the expression 
of personal sentiment, which he regards as a changeable and 



LECONTE DE LISLE 607 

exaggerated thing. He is after more enduring material. His 
sonnet, Les Montreurs, is a bitter diatribe against those who 
complacently display their hearts to others. He tells the 
public: 

Je ne te vendrai pas mon ivresse ou mon mal, 

Je ne livrerai pas ma vie a tes huees, 

Je ne danserai pas sur ton treteau banal 

Avec tes histrions et tes prostituees. 

Yet one may say that there is a note of passion in this very 
vehemence. But it is true that there are only a few allusions 
to the poet's own sentiments and then mainly in connection with 
childhood scenes. This objectivity does not make him impas- 
sive about everything. He feels social wrongs as well as the 
general pains and afflictions of men {Qdin) ; and especially he 
feels and answers the call of imperious beauty, whether in 
humanity or nature: 

Et les mondes encor roulent sous ses pieds blancs. 

(Hypatie) 

His attitude towards science, in the large sense, is also char- 
acteristic and anti-romantic. He dislikes the Romanticists on 
account of their ignorance. He held that profound knowledge 
of the past is necessary in order to write about it, and he says 
that " art and science, too long separated, should now become 
closely united." But Leconte de Lisle cannot stand modern 
inventions — the telegraph, the railroads and industrialism. These 
blight the vision, 

Et nous avons perdu le chemin de Paros. 

He seeks only the spirit of the cosmos, as studied and revealed 
in the larger, more imaginative sciences: ethnography, ancient 
and oriental history, archeology and geography ; and the natural 
sciences too, which he follows in his depiction of animals. In 
the use of his sources, especially of Greek, Indian and Scandi- 
navian monuments, he shows, together with some poetic license, 
an admirable understanding and treatment of historical truth. 
He arranges this to emphasize types, racial traits, general or 
controlling ideas. But in his revamping of old legends he does 



608 THE REACTION IN POETRY 

not often indulge in the fanciful reconstruction of the Roman- 
ticists. Leconte de Lisle also follows the great natural laws 
of science, which agree with his demand for exactness, order 
and objectivity. Yet his scientific thought is illuminated by the 
proper imagery, the harmony of the verse and the poet's sense 
of beauty. 

Connected with this tendency would be his attitude towards 
Nature, which is also scientific, following Humboldt and Darwin. 
He does not view man at all as the center of the universe, and 
Nature is not really in sympathy with humanity. Thus the poet 
discards anthropomorphism and the pathetic fallacy. But he 
admires great natural manifestations, such as storms, jungles 
and large animals. His animals, indeed, are represented on 
their own basis, often independently of man, a significant 
departure from the tradition of the fable. These wolves and 
elephants and condors are carved in bold relief, like the 
sculpture of Barye. In lonely grandeur they roam the desert 
or the jungle. Whether he is dealing with animals or with 
natural scenery, this poet has great descriptive power. His de- 
piction is full, vivid and accurate. Leconte de Lisle views 
nature as unified in essence and origin, under a diversity of 
forms. But sometimes the flux of forms impresses him most 
and gives rise to his pessimism: 

La Vie antique est faite inepuisablement 
Du tourbillon sans fin des apparences vaines. 

{La Maya) 

This metaphysical pessimism is largely Indian in its expres- 
sion. In presenting religion as the culminating experience of 
each race and in giving us symbols of many religions, the poet 
realizes that there has been no single stable belief and he asks 
to be whirled away towards new gods. After making his appeal 
to Maya, the " mirage immortel " of Illusion, he feels so strongly 
the constant flux of all beliefs that finally he seeks a negative 
Nirvana. With this Oriental pessimism is mixed something of 
the Schopenhauer brand, concerning the misery of being born; 
and Leconte de Lisle is also utterly out of sympathy with 
democracy and modern life. His thought, then, is often sad 
and austere. 



HEREDIA 609 

Equally austere, but of an austere perfection, is his style, and 
so his final characteristic is formal beauty. For this he goes 
back to the Greeks, but his ideal goddess is a severe 
His Form Athene rather than a smiling Aphrodite. He is 
the last link in the Gallo-Greek chain: Ronsard, Racine, Chenier, 
Leconte de Lisle. His religion of art has produced some of the 
loftiest of modern poems, of which Midi may be especially cited; 
sculptured verses in the manner of Gautier, though with more 
gravity and consistency; marble as opposed to intaglio work. 
Leconte de Lisle's structure is clear and logical. He chooses 
his words and balances his rhythms to make the picture and the 
idea salient. The words are notable for their precision, yet they 
often have also an appropriate metallic sonority and even at 
times a romantic suggestiveness. This style combines majesty 
and sadness; it is a march of the dying gods. The poet is not 
inventive as regards meter, approving the restraint of the crys- 
tallized forms. His verse has a durable solidity and splendor, 
together with a certain coldness. All in all, with his devotion 
to ideals of beauty, by the new values that he gave to descriptive 
poetry, and through his piercing natural philosophy, this poet 
ranks as the leader of his generation. 2 

Leconte de Lisle's most distinguished pupil was Jose-Maria 
de Heredia (1842-1905). He too was half a foreigner, born in 
. Cuba of an aristocratic family. His people were de- 

scended, on one side, from the original Spanish con- 
querors, whom Heredia has often celebrated in his verse. He pur- 
sued advanced historical studies in Havana and at the Ecole de 
Chartes, but soon left pure scholarship and became a member 
of the Parnassian group. He had the manner and breeding of a 
conqueror, and a brother-poet said that " his neckties were as 
splendid as his sonnets." 

Heredia's single volume, Les Trophees (1893), contains about 
one hundred pieces, many of which had already appeared else- 
where. The great majority of these poems are sonnets. The 
title was chosen to indicate the " trophies " or the " spoils " of 

2 As a contemporary phenomenon, we may note the Provencal poetry of Frederic 
Mistral (1831-1914) and that of his brother-Felibriges — a society for the en- 
couragement of the Provencal muse. The masterpiece of this school is Mistral's 
Mireille (1859), a glowing tale of the South, with an epic flow and a Doric back- 
ground. 



610 THE REACTION IN POETRY 

humanity throughout the ages. Here we have again the con- 
ception of Hugo or of Leconte de Lisle; Heredia shows the 

"Les learning of the latter rather than the riotous imagi- 

Trophees" nation of the former. The presentation, of course, 
is much condensed; the sonnet form calls for the essential 
characteristics of each type considered. The races and epochs 
included in Heredia's survey are Greece, Rome, the Middle Ages 
and the Renaissance, his favorite period of " Les Conquerants," 
and Old Japan; there is also a final, more personal section on 
Nature and Dreams. The poet's sympathies are selected rather 
than widespread. He gives us " historical impressions," with a 
good deal of externality. He is metallic, sumptuous and strenuous, 
and is to be viewed almost entirely from the standpoint of form. 

The Trochees were dedicated to Leconte de Lisle, whom Here- 
dia follows precisely for the cult of form and impersonality. 
He aims at a high, lasting perfection, and he attains effects of 
mingled exactness and splendor, pressing the full value from each 
word or image. His muse is subtle and complicated, with unex- 
pected revelations. Hence he enjoys the difficulty of the 
sonnet, which with him is a condensed but a developed organism, 
varied in its functioning, much enlarged in its scope. Each of 
his sonnets, it has been said, is " as large as an epic." Heredia 
generally employs the regular French form, both in octave and 
Artistic sestet, but he introduces a striking feature in his 

Effects ] ag ^ i mGj wn ich frequently opens up fresh horizons. 

Observe the final touch in Les Conquerants or in Antoine et 
Cleopdtre. New stars dawn in the visions of poet or conqueror, 
Antony sees the flight of galleys in Cleopatra's eyes, the Greek 
runner seems to fly from his pedestal into the arena, and Pegasus 

Bat le ciel ebloui de ses ailes de flamme. 

Heredia has many resources, both of eloquence and of erudition. 
He sees things across their historical, mythological or heraldic 
trappings, and he is especially strong and suggestive in his dic- 
tion. The conqueror's dream is called a " reve heroique et 
brutal" — heroic, because of the knightly adventure involved; 
brutal, because gold was the object of his search. Moreover, the 
poet perfectly fuses idea and form: he forwards the unity of the 
total effect not only through epithet, but through image and 



HEREDIA 611 

sentiment, through sound and syllables. Like Gautier's, his 
imagination was essentially plastic, he often uses the terms of 
the painter, the sculptor or the goldsmith. He celebrates these 
arts, and his own work could be reproduced by them. Thus 
among his chief formal characteristics are the sonorous and the 
pictorial values. 

As regards sonority, one critic introduces an article on Heredia 
by exclaiming, " Fanfares, cymbals, trumpets and Roman horns!" 
Heredia, whom Gautier congratulated on the sonority of his 
very name, brings over something of the verbal sumptuousness 
of his native Spanish tongue. He is a master of rhythm, 
cadence, consonance. Witness the hard distinctness of Les Con- 
querants, which is full of tone-color and metallic luster, set off 
against the softer connotations of Le vieil Orfevre. There is also 
the pictorial quality, especially vivid in Le Recif de corail or 
La Dogaressv, which revives a painting by Veronese. In both 
poems, we have an exceedingly brilliant coloring, arranged in a 
progression of values or planes. Many sonnets are pictorially de- 
scriptive of nature: for instance, those on Japan, the New World 
or Brittany; and Heredia might seem intoxicated with sounds 
and colors, were it not that he always gives us the feeling of 
choice and mastery. 

One may ask then, Does this poet deal mainly in sounding 
brass and tinkling cymbals? By no means. The idea or sen- 
timent is there, though preferably veiled or viewed through 
external adornment. But it is true that Heredia has not very 
many ideas. They are few but strong, and individualized by 
the language in which they are expressed. Heredia speaks 
largely from the standpoint of a Renaissance humanist who 
believes in beauty plus force, in the splendor of high moments, 
in a " spectacular universe," and in man as a fine active animal. 
This standpoint may be illustrated by the superb cycle on 
Antoine et Cleopdtre. " Impassive " and serene, Heredia is not 
troubled by the Romantic malady nor tortured by metaphysics. 
Yet he can ,express discreetly, as in his Roman Epitaphs, the 
epicurean melancholy of passing splendors', the " lachrymae 
rerum " and the sense of ruin. This tenderer note might have 
been more frequently sounded, for Heredia omits many of our 
more familiar feelings and yearnings. 



CHAPTER IV 

REALISTIC FICTION: 
FLAUBERT AND MAUPASSANT 

In 1848 there had occurred an event whose consequences 
deeply influenced fiction and the drama. The " Revolution of 
February " resulted in the establishment of the 
short-lived Second Republic and finally in the Sec- 
ond Empire (1852-70), with Napoleon III, nephew of the great 
Napoleon, as Emperor. Those who looked forward to a restora- 
tion of the imperial glories of France could for a time believe 
their hopes fulfilled. The new government, though highly cen- 
tralized, showed constructive tendencies in education, industry 
and the arts. Paris was splendidly rebuilt as a modern capital, 
railroads and public works were developed throughout the coun- 
try, and towards the end of his reign Napoleon showed a willing- 
ness to meet certain liberal and democratic desires. Prestige 
abroad and the glory of French arms were enhanced by the victo- 
ries in the Crimea (1854-56) and the rescue of Italy from Austria 
(1859). Yet the swift "debacle" of the Franco-Prussian war 
indicated something very wrong in the State. Within a few 
months, France had lost her European prestige, her armies and 
Alsace-Lorraine. The disaster of Sedan (Sept. 2, 1870) in which 
Napoleon surrendered with eighty thousand men, was followed 
by the fall of Strassburg and Metz. During the siege of Paris, 
which lasted four months, a Provisional Government was in con- 
trol. In February, 1871, after Paris had capitulated, the 
National Assembly appointed Thiers, the historian, as Presi- 
dent of the French Republic. Thiers concluded peace with 
Germany. 

Several causes for decay, during the Second Empire, were 
prominent in the minds of contemporary writers. The chief 
cause was the presence of too much luxury, tending to material- 
ism in living and to personal and political corruption (treated 

612 



REALISM 613 

by Augier, the Goncourts and especially by Zola). Another 

cause was that the idealism which Lamartine and G. Sand had 

brought to the movement of 1848 was replaced by the cynicism 

and doubt which naturally accompany a political reversion 

(cf. Flaubert's L'Education sentimentale) . Connected with 

this was a deterioration in moral tone and in artistic taste, found 

both in bureaucratic officials and in the " little bourgeoisie," ever 

bent on declaring itself. The reaction of 1848 found the reading 

public in a transition phase, weary of Romanticism, assenting 

to the abolishment of the roman-feuilleton, and prepared by 

Balzac as well as by social conditions for the definite advent 

of Realism. The tendency towards objective description which 

declared itself (see preceding chapters) in drama, poetry and 

painting (for example in Courbet) would naturally find its 

greatest scope in fiction. 

By 1855, we find the term le realisme taking hold, and critics 

generally begin to employ it in a depreciatory sense. The word 

~ .. connoted for them the immoral, the brutal or the 

Realism ' . 

trivial, and few there are who perceive the signifi- 
cance of the literary method. Almost alone Sainte-Beuve saw 
its possibilities and favored, though with due reserves, its ex- 
pansion. But as the movement gained force, through the efforts 
of Flaubert and his colleagues, conservative critics slowly yield 
the stronghold of " taste " and admit elements of power and truth 
in Realism. For a time, however, its productions were not glori- 
ous and were easily demolished. A certain Champfleury, an 
ardent admirer of Balzac, wrote some insipid stories, Chien- 
Caillou and Les Bourgeois de Molinchart (1855), which contain 
petty observations and small-town talk. More talent appears 
in the work of Ernest Feydeau, who caused good critics to 
esteem him the rival of Flaubert. Feydeau's brilliant and sen- 
suous Fanny (1857) presents the psychological case of a lover 
who is jealous of a husband; the novel evinces strength in the 
delineation of passion and of material background. But Fey- 
deau's other work is inferior, his name has not endured, and 
it is time to come to the true banner-leader of the movement. 

Gustave Flaubert offers in his method the concentrated es- 
sence of Realism, and in his life (1821-80) a concentrated 



614 REALISTIC FICTION 

devotion to literature. He called himself a " Benedictine of let- 
ters," and in his elimination and scorn of everything else, he ap- 
fi pears not only as a zealot of art for art's sake, but 

also as a victim of that separation of author and 
public which is one of the more lasting and less fortunate legacies 
of Romanticism. He was born at Rouen, where he spent his child- 
hood and adolescence. His father was a surgeon of repute, and a 
medical environment left its effect on Flaubert's work. His 
mother was of Norman blood, which was apparent also in her 
son's physique; Gustave had a " viking " exterior, a large frame 
and a certain exuberance, especially in his attractive youth. 
Among his friends were Louis Bouilhet, the poet; Alfred Le 
Poittevin, the uncle of Guy de Maupassant; and Maxime Du 
Camp, who was scarcely of a caliber to understand the novelist. 
Flaubert was sent to Paris to study law and already showed his 
indifference to everything but literature. In his twenties he 
wrote various Romantic effusions {(Euvres de jeunesse), had two 
love-affairs not fortunate in their issue, and became subject 
to the intermittent attacks (neurasthenic or epileptic) which 
later accentuated his melancholy and pessimism. At twenty- 
five he gave up all thought of a large full life and settled near 
Rouen, on the family estate of Croisset, to become a laborious 
galley-slave of letters. This existence was interrupted only 
by a long journey to the Orient, undertaken with Maxime Du 
Camp (1849) ; and by later flights to Paris, where he associated 
with the Naturalistic group (see next chapter). The gradual 
loss of his family and friends, increasing ill-health and the effect 
of the Franco-Prussian war, further darkened his middle years; 
his declining days were somewhat brightened by the discipleship 
of Maupassant and by the generous interest of George Sand, 
with whom he maintained a most revealing correspondence. 
Otherwise, Flaubert developed a proud, solitary and suspicious 
nature, exasperated by ordinary contacts and obsessed by that 
hatred of everything " bourgeois," which finally ruled him as 
a mania. This was in part an acquired misanthropy, for he 
started with a fund of geniality and kindness, which indeed he 
always manifested towards his friends and relatives. He had 
really a simple soul, thwarted and twisted by excessive theories; 
his mind contained only a few ideas, but these dominated him 



FLAUBERT 615 

absolutely. Chief among them were the devotion to beauty in 
style and the cult of objective and often ugly truth. So the 
clash of Romanticist and Realist, with their partial fusion in 
his work, will explain much of Flaubert. 

By temperament and taste he was undoubtedly a Romantic, 
of a violent and exuberant sort: a worshiper of exotic splendor, 
of the sumptuous past and of lovely phrases and 
emperamen ^^-^ Hence the voyage to Egypt and the East, 
with its profound effect upon his imagination; hence his early 
fondness for Chateaubriand and his sympathies with Gautier; 
hence his more morbid taste for " le mysterieux, le lugubre, le 
macabre "; and hence his dislike of mediocrity and his predilec- 
tion for the ivory tower. But as a late-comer, Flaubert had the 
sensation of a creed outworn, and he evolved the conscience of 
a Realist. He incessantly preaches and exemplifies two princi- 
pies: accurate observation or documentation, im- 
personality in style and treatment. The love of 
truth actuated his search for the real thing, but the love of 
beauty still demanded the perfect phrase. So his famous theory 
of le mot juste, the indefatigable hunt for the most exact and 
expressive word, was paralleled by a more naive conviction that 
there was a " pre-established harmony " between beauty and 
truth in style, that the truest phrase would also be most pleasing 
to the ear. As regards his methods, Flaubert was a fairly con- 
sistent Realist, offering an " arsenal " of technical devices for 
his followers; but in his subjects, though preferring the Ro- 
mantic, he alternates regularly between the two extremes. Thus, 
before undertaking Madame Bovary, he wrote his first extrava- 
gant and dithyrambic version of the Tentation de Saint-Antoine 
(1847). He read this manuscript to his friends, who advised 
him to destroy it and take a more " earthly " subject. For seven 
years then, he toiled patiently on the Realism of Madame Bo- 
vary, whose appearance, just when conditions were most favor- 
able (1857), soon established Flaubert as the most accomplished 
and audacious artist of the movement. The publication of the 
novel also led to a lawsuit in which the author was acquitted of 
any attempt to scandalize. Severity and truth, indeed, mark 
the handling of the rather difficult subject — to wit, the dangers 
of Romanticism for a provincial bourgeoise. The stages of Emma 



616 REALISTIC FICTION 

Bovary's decline are clearly marked: her early Romantic read- 
ings and dreams; her torpid marriage; the longings aroused by 
a ball and her sharp judgment of her husband; her Platonic 
love for Leon, the young clerk; the more criminal affair with 
Rodolphe, her full flowering, his abandonment, and her long ill- 
ness; the second affair with Leon, her wasteful expenditures and 
neglect of home duties; the harrying by creditors and the de- 
termination to end it all by suicide. Emma is a living charac- 
ter, completely depicted in enduring colors; and the other per- 
sonages also live, within their narrow range; the " soft " stupid 
husband and the talkative apothecary, Homais, represent two 
ironic aspects of the bourgeois. There is scarcely a sympathetic 
character in the book; these people are prevailingly foolish or 
feeble. Although Emma Bovary must incorporate many of 
his own dreams, the author does not abandon his attitude of 
severely impersonal detachment. He never shows feeling and 
scarcely allows himself to have an opinion. This impassive 
projection of the story and nothing but the story gives to Ma- 
dame Bovary a great Realistic strength — an objectivity and 
a concentration that Balzac did not usually evince. Other 
Realistic features are the careful study of the country-town 
environment ; the justesse of observation, delineation and diction ; 
the prominence of money difficulties, of physiology and disease; 
the use of characteristic detail, like the nondescript cap of 
Charles Bovary; the presentation of the mediocre in character 
and circumstance. But all of this is lifted and made artistic 
by Flaubert's perfect sense of style, which will be considered 
later. Madame Bovary is not only a technical marvel, it is 
also thronged with provincial life and truth. It has been called 
the French Middlemarch, and it remains the greatest novel of 
the century. 

Even during the composition of this masterpiece, Flaubert 
was haunted by his deeper desire for remote and Romantic 
- magnificence. He turned Eastwards, to realize his 

dream, and after six years of assiduous labor and 
documentation, including a visit to the site of Carthage, he pub- 
lished his gorgeous Salammbo (1862). Throughout the packed 
chapters of this semi-epic, description and archeology run riot, 
in a festival of color. The historical setting, which lacks in- 



FLAUBERT 617 

terest, is that of the war of the mercenaries against Carthage 
in the third century before Christ. The story is nominally 
that of the princess and priestess, Salammbo, the men who 
loved her, and her mystical consecration to the goddess Tanit. 
But the thread of action is submerged in archeological details 
and confusing -enumerations; as Flaubert admitted, "the 
pedestal is too large for the statue ", and the characters seem 
effaced and dull. What remains is the evocation of a ruthless 
period, elaborately revived and described with an amount of 
painstaking care that shows Flaubert's Realistic conscience still 
dominant. The author remains hard and cold, but the reader 
ends by believing that this Carthage thus lived in its cruelty, 
horror and pomp, with all the complications of its material 
life — costumes and ceremonies, sieges and superstitions — 
made plausible and distinct. The glowing reality of the im- 
pression is enhanced by the bare tension of a style whose crisp 
energy wholly accords with the subject. Salammbo is a choice 
tapestry where a thousand details crush and crowd together; 
it is a mosaic floor paved with pebbles and precious stones; it 
is at once a tour de force and a unique and barbarous monument. 
But it is a monument of erudition rather than of humanity. 

Yet once more Flaubert turned to a modern Realistic subject. 
Seven years were needed for the composition of L' Education 

rtlL , TT . sentimentale (1869). This novel is laid around 
Other Works 

the Revolution of 1848 — again requiring inordi- 
nate documentation — and it deals with the loves of a certain 
Frederic Moreau. He is supposed to be the masculine counter- 
part of Emma Bovary. Flaubert acknowledges that the hero 
is a poor creature and that the structure of the novel is lax and 
amorphous ; but these features are deliberate and anticipate the 
Naturalistic doctrines of no hero and no plot. Whatever their 
warrant in the stupider side of life, such characteristics do not 
make for interest or art. But the ironic and careful presenta- 
tion of the epoch considered lends weight to L'Education senti- 
mentale. The author's pendulum swings back to Romanticism 
in the final Tentation de Saint-Antoine (1874), in which the 
vision of the saint's more metaphysical temptations gives rise 
to some superb writing. The alterating currents are found side 
by side in the volume of Trois contes (1877), of which the best 



618 REALISTIC FICTION 

and most Realistic story — Un Cceur simple — shows more 
human sympathy than Flaubert usually allowed himself. His 
hatred of the bourgeois reaches to the point of monomania 
in the unfinished Bouvard et Pecuchet. This work treats the 
efforts of two retired merchants to find interest in a series of 
avocations for which they are not suited. Their ventures are 
described in an extremely technical manner, and again there 
is no plot. 

Except in Madame Bovary, Flaubert's composition is not uni- 
formly successful. Elsewhere long passages could be deleted 

without hurting the composition and to the benefit 
Composition 

of the interest. But at his best he illustrates two 

structural principles which became a part of the heritage of 
fiction. He condenses and concentrates his data towards a 
unity of tone and a totality of effect. And he scatters and 
interweaves the various elements in his narrative (analysis, de- 
scription, dialogue, history) so as to make them march all to- 
gether, driving four-in-hand where Balzac had driven tandem. 
Flaubert called these long complex passages his " tableaux"; 
striking examples are the scene of the agricultural fair in Bovary 
and the first chapter of Salammbo. The presentation from one 
a st l standpoint, that of the heroine, again helps sustain 
the unity of the former novel. In both works, Flau- 
bert's style is masterly. Accurate observation leads to appro- 
priate expression. The concrete phrasing tends to a certain 
" materialization " of sentiment or idea (red cheeks as a sign of 
love) ; the figures are suitable to the setting (" ses reves tombant 
dans la boue comme des hirondelles blessees ") . But beyond 
such Realistic devices, this style has usually a full richness and 
beauty that sweep us at once into the presence of a classic. 
Superb passages, like the sunrise in Salammbo or the end of the 
Tentation de Saint- Antoine, reveal Flaubert as the legitimate 
successor of Chateaubriand in rhetorical perfection. It may be 
that he lacked the large creative flow, succeeding rather by dint 
of will and patience. But we cannot forget that Flaubert 
furnished the best model of Realism to his generation and 
became the " novelists' novelist." We cannot forget the pre- 
eminence of Madame Bovary nor the heavy purple splendor of 
Salammbo. 



MAUPASSANT 619 

Like Flaubert, Guy de Maupassant (1850-93) was a Norman 
Realist. He spent his childhood at Etretat, his youth at Rouen, 
where he preferred fishing and boating to study. 
He served in the war of 1870, then took a small 
post at Paris, in the ministry of marine. In 1873, he came 
under Flaubert's influence and showed himself a docile pupil 
in this relationship, which lasted seven years. During that 
period Maupassant was gay, strong, fond of practical jokes 
(farces) ; he lived an easy-going life; in vacations he returned 
to his beloved boating. Two things indicate his later develop- 
ment: he prefers savage nature to the crowded waterside 
resorts; and he publishes a volume of poems (Des vers) in 
which several pieces are strongly Naturalistic. The same tend- 
ency appears in Boule de suif, which began his career as a story- 
teller. This tale was published in the collection known as Les 
soirees de Medan (1880), to which Zola, Huysmans and others 
contributed (see next chapter). After the success of Boule de 
suif, Maupassant decided to devote himself wholly to author- 
ship. A series of stories, novels and journalistic contributions 
gave him fame and financial ease. Practically all of his work 
was done during the next decade, which period witnessed a 
change in the temperament of the writer. Ambition and hard 
work made him preoccupied, dissipation made him morose; 
formerly a robust sportsman, he became a " taureau triste " ; 
morbid analysis drove him into pessimism; he dipped into high 
life with doubtful results; he traveled in Corsica, Algeria and 
Italy; increasing ill-health sent him to the Riviera, and there, 
in 1892, he was stricken with madness. He died, probably by 
his own hand, eighteen months later. 

Maupassant's theory of literature owed much to Flaubert, 
especially as regards the necessity of accurate individualizing 
observation and the search for the mot juste. Flaubert taught 
him a long patience and how to choose the characteristic aspect 
of every object — to consider a tree or stone until it became un- 
like every other tree or stone. With this impersonal observation 
a certain individualism was bound up, for Flaubert told his pupil 
that he must possess originality, native or acquired. So we find 
Maupassant declaring for the " whole truth," but the truth as 
seen across an individual temperament, which introduces some 



620 REALISTIC FICTION 

logic and illusion into the chaos of appearances. Although 
his artistic attitude seems cold and impartial, Maupassant's 
fiction is permeated with a definite personal philosophy and de- 
rives from the successive phases of his own life. " C'est toujours 
a des anecdotes ou a des episodes personnels qu'il demande la 
matiere de ses recits " (Maynial). But while aided by recollec- 
tion or gossip, Maupassant recorded the deeds of actual people, 
and while he angered certain Normans through the faithfulness 
of his observation, his manner is highly impersonal and detached. 
Let us consider the six divisions of his short-story subjects. 
These number nearly three hundred titles, and their external 
range is exactly as wide as the author's experience. 

The first division and the largest, including one-fourth of the 
tales, deals with Normandy, the province which the author 
. knew best as a youth and to which he often returned 
on vacations. He knew the peasant life, with its 
meanness, shrewdness and occasional pathos (Le Petit Filt, 
Hautot pere et fils) ; the open air life of hunting and boating 
(Les Becasses, Mouche) ; cynical aspects of small-town narrow- 
ness (La Ficelle). Again, Maupassant's experience of 1870 was 
from the angle of the countryman who sees his province invaded 
by the Prussians. A smaller but excellent division of stories 
contains half-a-dozen masterpieces on that subject (Boule de 
suif, Les Prisonniers, L'Aventure de Walter Schnaffs), together 
with a few tales of military life in general. Next came the 
result of Maupassant's contacts with official ministries and 
with the existence of petty bureaucrats and bourgeois (En 
Famille, L'Heritage). Then Parisian high life (Ulnutile 
Beaute) and fast life, particularly the ruses of women (Les 
Epingles, Le Rendezvous, Decorel). Travel, especially on the 
Riviera, furnished some excellent backgrounds (Champ 
d'Oliviers, Jules Romain) ; Africa and Italy supplied various 
light loves (Allouma, Les Sceurs Rondoli). Finally, there are 
about forty stories connected with the author's malady; they 
range from the fantastic and morbid to the insane; the fear of 
death, Maupassant's chief obsession, becomes complicated with 
ideas of crime and other hallucinations (La Peur, Le Horla, Un 
Fou, Qui saitf, Suicides, La Morte). A similar progression 
may be traced in Maupassant's novels, of which the most 



MAUPASSANT 621 

conspicuous are Une Vie (1883), presenting the sad existence 
of a crushed wife in Normandy; Bel-Ami (1885), the Parisian 
climber in a world of journalism and corruption; Pierre et Jean 
(1888) and Fort comme la mort, which are less cynical than pre- 
vious novels but no less pessimistic in their treatment of the woes 
of the heart. In Maupassant's work as a whole, the point of 
view is generally somber or sardonic. He was not a lover of 
mankind and wore the dark glasses of the professed Naturalist. 

It is primarily as a short-story writer that Maupassant excels, 
and since he is often considered the best modern representative 
of this genre, his technique should be carefully 
examined. In actual length, his stories vary a great 
deal. The nouvelle which usually heads the volume {Monsieur 
Parent, Yvette), may run from fifty pages to twice that length. 
But the more characteristic form is the conte which is extremely 
brief and laconic. Maupassant's point of departure is usually 
an episode, a " slice of life " chosen to illustrate character or 
manners. Many of these " facts " were related to him by his 
mother or his friends. Sometimes he merely tells an anecdote 
(Le Verrou) or outlines a situation (L'Inftrme) ; or he draws a 
sketch (Un Portrait) or writes a letter (La Moustache, Mots 
d 'amour). The conte proper readily becomes improper (Les 
Epingles, La Patronne). At its best, the structure of his works 
is marked by two things: an economy which gives only the 
essential elements of character, situation and development ; and 
an onward movement which combines logic with the maximum 
of simplicity. Hence a dramatic swiftness which is Maupas- 
sant's especial gift. Naturalness and simplicity also mark his 
use of language, which is straightforward and not unusual in 
vocabulary. Even the titles of his stories are unpretentious 
and easily forgotten. He disliked the impressionistic over- 
refined style favored by the Goncourts. His sentences are clear 
and rapid. His language is sober, often sardonic, with an effect 
of dry precision. This results from his use of the mot juste 
(noun, verb or adjective), which because it is the characteristic 
or salient word lends to the style an accent of bold relief in 
detail or description. To characterize, he chooses the essential 
trait of costume or setting; and the trait final has also its perfect 
precision and fitness. He is an exponent of the direct denoue- 



622 REALISTIC FICTION 

merit, in which the last paragraph furnishes a dramatic close 
to the narrative. However, the " surprise ending " is less 
common in Maupassant than is often believed; it can certainly 
be found (La Parure, Le Pain maudit, L'Ami Joseph) , but more 
frequent is the rounded ending which fulfils our expectations. 
Some of his stories (for example, Le Pere Milon) , announce the 
denouement at the beginning. For the sake of vividness, he 
leans to the first-person form of narration and often uses 
as a prelude of men's dinner or some casual meeting. The 
kernel of the story may be some small object, around which the 
train of events is organized; witness Le Parapluie, La Ficelle or 
La Parure, which last has been voted the best short story in ex- 
istence. Dealing with rudimentary types, Maupassant's psychol- 
ogy is limited, though not insufficient. He appreciates outdoor 
nature and shows considerable power in describing it. As a 
Realist, of course, he thoroughly places his tales in terms of 
material setting, exterior or interior, costumes, habits, and so on. 
Otherwise, in the type of stories and in the supple dexterity with 
which he tells them, he resembles La Fontaine and is considered, 
in fact, the legitimate continuator of the old conte gaulois. 
His Classical qualities are sobriety, balance, sureness of eye 
and simplicity. 

Apparent naturalness, then, is the hall-mark of Maupassant's 
technique, just as " Naturalism " (see next chapter) stamps 
his outlook and philosophy. The latter undergoes a progression 
from a robust sensualism, in which the forces of Nature are 
accepted, to the pessimistic effect of this materialism on a 
man who develops mind and heart and who perceives that 
the joys of this earth are fleeting. Although he over-stresses 
the depiction of the distasteful and the ignoble, we recognize, 
towards the end, the presence of a soul in revolt. This may 
account for the philosophic digressions, which seem to increase 
in his later work, somewhat to the detriment of narrative unity. 
Misanthropy, the mental fatigue of his generation, the lack of 
spiritual comfort or belief, warred against love and the life- 
force which were " apaises soudain par l'Eternel Oubli " (Fort 
comme la mort) . Death was finally the stronger, and before 
death came philosophic nihilism and madness. 



CHAPTER V 

FICTION (CONTINUED): 
ZOLA, THE GONCOURTS, DAUDET 

It seems best to make between " Realism " and " Naturalism," 
in their literary significance, a distinction both of time and of 
degree. The best work of Balzac and of Flaubert 
stands for the earlier development of Realism; 
while Zola and his school pushed that doctrine to an extreme 
and dubbed it le Naturalisme. Maupassant belongs rather to 
this later phase of the movement. Naturalism then is an ex- 
cessive form of Realism and is usually considered as possessing 
the following characteristics. First, it allows a still larger 
variety of subjects, emphasizing the lower and coarser forms 
of life; it presents this material in a fashion which is often 
revolting; it rejects ideality, it minimizes heart-interest and 
plot-interest in favor of " facts " and notations; it magnifies the 
study of the industries and seeks to apply to fiction the processes 
of the natural sciences; from these, taken in their application 
to heredity and environment, it draws its conception of life — 
deterministic, fatalistic, essentially pessimistic. The laws of 
brute Nature are viewed as grimly controlling the destinies of 
helpless and hopeless man. Pessimism is, in fact, widely char- 
acteristic of this generation of writers (cf. Flaubert, Leconte 
de Lisle, Taine) , who seem, for the most part, to have exhausted 
the springs of enthusiasm and sentiment. This " maladie 
morale," according to Bourget (see Bk. IX, Ch. IV), results 
especially from the general depression produced by the Franco- 
Prussian war. The former French gaiety seems to be much ob- 
scured, and certainly it is least conspicuous in the powerful but 
gloomy work of the Naturalists. 

The head and front of the Naturalistic school, though he 
preferred to call it a method rather than a school, was Emile 
Zola (1840-1902). His father was an Italian engineer who had 

623 



624 ZOLA, THE GONCOURTS, DAUDET 

settled in France; his mother was French. The boy grew 
up at Aix-en-Provence, then moved with his mother to Paris, 
where his brief education was of a scientific rather 
than of a literary character. He knew poverty 
and the working-classes, from which he presently chose a wife 
(1870). He did not figure in the war nor in any external events 
until much later. He led an uneventful, virtuous and sedentary 
life. For a time he was clerk in the publishing house of 
Hachette, then went in for journalism and (c. 1880) wrote his 
critical articles which contain the theory of Naturalism. He 
acquired a suburban property at Medan, where originated 
the Soirees de Medan, of 1880. This collection contained 
rather grim stories of the Franco-Prussian war and is regarded 
as a manifesto of one Naturalistic group (Zola, Maupassant, 
Huysmans, Paul Alexis, Ceard, Hennique). The year 1880 is 
thus the central year of Naturalism, as 1857 is that of Realism. 
Zola had already become known through the early volumes of 
the Rougon-Macquart series. The severe labor and documen- 
tation demanded by this series occupied him for twenty -two years 
(1871-93). He emerged from his semi-obscurity to champion 
Dreyfus (see Bk. IX, Ch. I) in 1898. His indictment of the 
military powers {J'Accuse) caused Zola to be sentenced to 
imprisonment, and he sought refuge in England. There and 
later in Paris he embarked on the series of the Trots Villes, 
followed by the Quatre Evangiles, which he did not live to com- 
plete. His accidental death (1902) was caused by asphyxiation. 
He was distinguished for his tenacity, his polemic spirit, his 
interest in the proletariat and his lack of taste. 

Zola lived largely as a recluse, and he was not an artist; his 
fiction suffers from these handicaps. He was formidable mainly 
H" Th ky his method, which he developed as early as 

Therese Raquin (1867). Its principles are laid 
down in his critical work, especially Le Roman experimental 
(1880) and Les Romanciers naturalistes (1881). He defines 
art as "un coin de la nature vu a travers un temperament." 
The personality of the writer admits variety and clothes 
the work in individual form — for instance, the Goncourts are 
allowed their more refined and aristocratic reactions. But the 
substance is immutable Nature (reality) which provides " human 




pq 



LES ROUGON-MACQUART 625 

documents." These were studied physiologically and socially 
by Balzac, and psychologically by Stendhal, 1 who are claimed as 
the two pedestals of Naturalism. In either case, observation 
rather than imagination is the novelist's requisite. To this the 
Naturalist should now add the experimental method of science 
(derived from Claude Bernard's Introduction a la Medecine 
experimental, 1865) : that is, he should expose his sensibility to 
life and he should work, as in a laboratory, upon the events 
and characters provided by experience. Zola did not perceive 
that the writer cannot really produce and manipulate his ma- 
terial, as the scientist can ; the term " experimental " is then a 
misnomer, while another distortion of true science is the extent to 
which Zola relied on the doctrine of heredity throughout the 
Rougon-Macquart. 

This huge cycle, consisting of twenty volumes, records the 
" histoire naturelle et sociale d'une famille sous le second em- 
" Les Rougon pire." The family, originating from a neurasthenic 
Macquart " an( j a drunkard (La Fortune des Rougon) , prolongs 
that double taint through its many members and diverse milieux. 
The Comedie humaine evidently inspired this social history, 
which deals with reappearing names in various " conditions " 
or ranks in life. But Zola emphasizes the trade or profession less 
than the hereditary taint, and he adds a strong element of patho- 
logical and clinical research. He even composed a genealogical 
tree, with medico-legal data on each descendant. Also his chief 
figures are not so much characters as grandiose and symbolic 
types. Thus " Nana " is the Courtesan, Saccard is the Specu- 
lator, Dr. Pascal is the Savant, etc. Among the milieux repre- 
sented are Aix-en-Provence (La Conquete de Plassans), the 
fashionable society of the Empire {La Curee) , the central markets 
{Le Ventre de Paris), the department-store (Au Bonheur- des 
Dames) and the railroads (La Bete humaine). UAssommoir 
(1877), which made Zola's reputation, exhibits the drunkard 
and the saloon; La Terre (1887), his most scandalous production, 
is a degraded treatment of the peasantry. His best and most 
powerful novels are Germinal (1885), that great study of the 
mines, and La Debacle (1892), a most vivid and truthful fresco 
of the Franco-Prussian war. 

1 It is questionable whether any of the Naturalists proceeded from Stendhal. 
Certainly Zola was independent of him. 



626 ZOLA, THE GONCOURTS, DAUDET 

In all of these works, as in the later series of the Cities and 
the Evangels, the system is much the same. Zola admits that in- 
vention was his weak side. He started not from incidents or 
personages, but from the desire to depict a certain cross-section 
of life. This he would study as a specialty, partly through 
first-hand observation but mainly through monographs. The 
subjects of which he had personal knowledge, for example, the 
life of the working classes, are naturally much better handled 
than such monstrous exaggerations as La Terre or such a guide- 
book as Rome. Having determined his field, he would select his 
main characters — usually some of the Rougon-Macquart — and 
compose actual dossiers for them, as well as for the subsidiary 
personages. He would fix them in their main traits and choose 
for them a certain type of dialogue, preferably coarse; and it is a 
feature of his style that the same kind of language is usual in the 
indirect dialogue and even in the psychological analyses of his 
characters (cf. UAssommoir). The psychology, however, is of 
the most elementary kind. It has been said that Zola gave 
a soul to things and withdrew the soul from man. Criminals 
and morons abound in his pages. " La bete humaine " is 
his favorite phrase, and the physiological presentation of the 
Realists is pushed to a frequent and deliberate bestiality. This 
is occasionally relieved, to be sure, by the idyllic note (Le Reve, 
Le Docteur Pascal) . But Zola's strength is found either in the 
depiction of grandiose types (see above) or in the equally " epic " 
vivification of certain huge symbols: the Locomotive, the Mine, 
the Market, the wounded Forest in La Debacle. These Franken- 
steins live, agonize and die before our eyes. However Romantic 
they may be, such creations are wonderfully effective and well- 
sustained. Zola is strong also in the cumulative treatment " des 
vastes ensembles materiels et des infinis details exterieurs " (cf. 
Balzac) . Among these " vastes ensembles " should be empha- 
sized his unsurpassed handling of crowds, whether the morning 
procession of laborers, a riotous mob of miners, or the array 
and confusion of the battle-field. Certain descriptive " tableaux " 
are equally impressive : the parade of carriages and the conserva- 
tory in La Curee; the intricacies of the vegetable market; even 
homely domestic interiors (a laundry, a living-room) ; or the 
swarming credulity of Lourdes, which is the best of the Trois 
Villes. 



THE NOVELS OF THE GONCOURTS 627 

Zola also deserves credit for the humanitarian faith of his latest 
trilogy — the attack on race-suicide in Fecondite and the apotheo- 
sis of labor in Le Travail. But these works add nothing of note 
to his method, which remains the crude presentation of the 
" masses " as an undigested whole. Zola's style harmonizes with 
his point of view, in its lack of distinction and its heavy lum- 
bering tread which can become, on occasions, a powerful stride. 
For good or for evil, the man and his method live in his works; 
but French life could scarcely have existed in all the darkness 
with which he has surrounded it. His outlook and his rigid a 
priori system keep him from rendering Nature in the fullest 
sense. 

Edmond de Goncourt (1822-96) and his brother Jules (1830- 
70) offer an interesting case of literary collaboration. " United 
The by art and blood," they thought and felt in common; 

Goncourts anc j ^hey lived, suffered and died for literature alone. 
Of a good family and well educated, they were intensely Parisian 
and modern. After the death of their mother (1848), the brothers 
were practically inseparable. Like Gautier, they expected to 
become painters and therefore undertook picturesque excursions 
in France and Algeria. But they turned to writing instead and 
after several false starts, they published Charles Demailly 
(1860) ; this novel and Manette Salomon (1867) furnished keen 
studies of artistic careers thwarted by women. Most of the 
Goncourts' work was based on personal experiences or those of 
their acquaintances. They also showed a preference for a refined 
treatment and for subjects that offered exceptional or path- 
ological interest. Such was the case with Soeur Philomene (1861), 
a " study in ivory " of hospital scenes and of a nun's mysticism; 
while Renee Mauperin (1864) , the Goncourts' best book, is a sub- 
tle and pathetic delineation of a peculiar " jeune fille moderne." 
None of these novels were immediately successful; indeed, the 
work of the brothers was scarcely known to the public under the 
Empire and has never been popular. They were compensated 
for this general neglect by the formation of an inner circle — 
that of the " diners Magny," a restaurant where the Goncourts 
foregathered with Sainte-Beuve, Gautier, Renan, Daudet and 
occasionally with Flaubert or Taine. This was not a cenacle, 
because of the separatist and carping tendencies of the group, 



628 ZOLA, THE GONCOURTS, DAUDET 

as manifest in the later Journal des Goncourt (9 vols., 1887-95). 

In the meantime, the brothers had founded Naturalism, of the 
low-life kind, in Germinie Lacerteux. This book was published 
As in 1865, before any important work of Zola's, and 

Naturalists deals with the pitiful life and loves of a servant-girl. 
The clinical sort of Naturalism is demonstrated in Madame Ger- 
vaisais (1869), which is mainly an analysis of religious hysteria. 
Madame Gervaisais and Manette Salomon also exhibit the ex- 
treme type of the plotless novel, with its deliberate lack of con- 
struction and a preference for detached scenes. Jules de Gon- 
court died of intellectual over-work in 1870, and for some time 
his afflicted brother wrote nothing. In 1877, Edmond published 
La Fille Elisa, a' bare and severe monograph on prostitution and 
the penitentiary. Of his other novels, La Faustin depicts the life 
of the theater and Les Freres Zemganno that of the circus. This 
last is probably Edmond's best novel, since it presents, with 
genuine sentiment, a pair of brothers who were united like the 
Goncourts themselves. Feeling is not absent from these novels, 
several of which (for example, Renee Mauperin) have very 
poignant endings. 

The Goncourt brothers were a complicated pair, and accord- 
ingly their work is composed of strangely mixed materials. On 
the one hand, it seems clear that they were the earliest theoreti- 
cians (cf. I dees et Sensations, 1866) and practitioners of an ad- 
vanced Naturalism. This is evidenced in their blank fatalistic 
pessimism, in their materialistic rendering of the external world, 
in their low-life subjects and their predilection for pathology, 
and especially in their emphasis on note-taking coupled with 
direct observation. Germinie Lacerteux was the biography of 
their own servant; hospitals were studied at first-hand, Edmond 
de Goncourt recorded the phases of his brother's last illness and 
urged feminine readers to send him their intimate observations, 
in order to perfect the psychology of Cherie. On the other 
hand, these brothers were essentially artists, and they modified 
their Realistic attitude by two individual novelties: impres- 
sionism and the "ecriture artiste." Thus they do not represent 
Naturalism with Zola's force and single-mindedness. 

" Impressionism," of the Goncourt variety, is the endeavor to 
render the sensations produced by external objects; it largely 



IMPRESSIONISM 629 

proceeds from and appeals to the nerves. Like their compeers 
(Balzac, Flaubert, Daudet), the Goncourts were 
" slaves of the lamp." After each protracted 
effort, their delicate organizations suffered a collapse and they 
fostered their hyperaesthetic acuteness of sensation. "II n'y a 
de bon que les choses exquises," said Edmond. Not only, then, 
were they preoccupied with nervous maladies {Charles Demailly, 
Sceur Philomene) , but they sought to convey, impression- 
istically, all the vibrant sensations to which they were exposed. 
Their vehicle was the " ecriture artiste," a new kind of 
preciosity, an intensely nervous, jerky style, " qui s'applique 
surtout ... a la sensation realisee par la phrase, l'epithete rare, 
Tadjectif substantif et le verbe substantif, la repetition, le pleo- 
nasme et le neologisme." Their rhetoric, which too often dis- 
regards syntax, clearness and harmony, tends to become an 
" orgy of virtuosity " and aims particularly at picturesque and 
colorful descriptions. So their novels became a disorganized 
series of tableautins, while their point of view is that of the 
painter who is most sensitive to the visible world (cf. Gautier). 
The art-sense of the brothers was increased by their very Parisian 
modernity and their love of bibelots, of which they left a con- 
siderable collection; also by their revival of the eighteenth 
century in a series of volumes 2 which display particularly the 
paintings, costumes and furniture of the old regime. Together 
with this revival, they should be credited with the introduction 
of Japanese art into France. In spite of aesthetic excesses, their 
" plastic psychology " and their pictorial style have distinct 
values, and the Goncourts remain the best equipped artists of 
the Naturalistic movement. Edmond founded the " Academie 
Goncourt," as a rallying point for literary rebels. This Academy 
has crowned some of the most notable books of recent years. 
Less forceful and original than the other Naturalists, but 
endowed with more charm and humanity, Alphonse Daudet 
Daudet (1840-97) owes much of his reputation to the fact 

that he was a thorough " Meridional." He was 
born at Nimes, and even in his boyhood his ardent temperament 
was touched by the Provengal sun. Neither a Catholic up- 

' La Femme au dix-huitieme sikcle (1862), L 'Art au dix-huiti&me sihcle, etc. 



630 ZOLA, THE GONCOURTS, DAUDET 

bringing nor a stricter education later at Lyons could restrain 
this turbulent youth, fond of reading, but fonder of playing 
truant, and reaching the depth of despair when family em- 
barrassments forced him to take a post as usher in a small school 
(Le Petit Chose). Fortunately, his devoted brother Ernest 
summoned him to Paris, where Alphonse was soon leading a 
bohemian life and publishing his early verses. He joined the 
staff of the Figaro and became private secretary to the Due de 
Moray, who acted as prime minister under Napoleon III. A 
favorite with Morny, Daudet was allowed restorative excursions 
to the Midi and Algeria [Port Tarascon) . From near Aries, in 
the winter of 1864, he brought back the Lettres de mon Moulin 
(publ. 1869), his first real success. His frail health often sent 
him back to the South, where he was on excellent terms with 
Mistral and the Provencal group of poets. In 1867, Daudet 
married Julie Allard, who made him an excellent wife and helped 
his literary development. The writer now bade farewell to 
Bohemia. His new seriousness was further confirmed by the 
events of 1870-71. Daudet served in the home-guard and de- 
clared that the war made a man of him. He wrote certain 
recollections of this period {Contes du lundi) , then passed on 
to his great novels and knew " l'ivresse du travail." Like 
Flaubert and Balzac, he would often work fifteen hours a day, 
a regime that seriously impaired his health. After 1877 he 
suffered with violent rheumatism and had to give up the 
physical exercises that he formerly loved. But he still kept his 
country home, in the valley of Champrosay near Paris, and in 
the capital itself Daudet had an interior noted for its delightful 
family life and wide hospitality. Frequent visitors were 
Flaubert, E. de Goncourt and Turgenev — whom the small boy 
of the house called " les geants." Daudet was exemplary in 
family relations; he was noted for his kindliness and constant 
good humor. He was simple in his tastes, distrusting riches, de- 
voted to books (especially Montaigne) , yet sociable and well ac- 
quainted with many classes of people. He never separated life 
from literature. He defined talent as an " intensite de vie," 
and his own talent surely has this quality. His powers of per- 
ception and expression were unusually keen. His career was 
helped by good-fortune and by his seductive personality, but 



DAUDET'S FICTION 631 

his books were written " avec le sue meme de l'arbre humain." 

An interlocking but useful classification of Daudet's fiction 
would distinguish: (1) stories and characters of the Midi; (2) 
Three novels of Parisian manners; (3) partly included 

Divisions in the above, the depiction of the humbler classes. 
o is or jj- g £ c tj on throughout is either autobiographical or 
closely based on known people and events. On this account, 
some of his friends avoided him, and it is said that he did not 
dare return to Tarascon. " To invent for him was to remem- 
ber." Memories of his impressionable Provencal youth are em- 
bedded in the exquisite Lettres de mon Moulin, which contain 
such gems as Le Cure de Cucugnan and La Mule du Pape. 
Fancy is wedded to fact in these brilliant joyous stories, and 
this note is prolonged in the famous Tartarin series. Tartarin 
de Tarascon (1872) creates the type of the boastful and self- 
deluded Southerner, still the source of inextinguishable laughter. 
For once, a sequel was not inferior to its predecessor, and Tar- 
tarin sur les Alpes (1885) was for long the most popular of 
Daudet's novels. Finally, Port-Tarascon (1890) takes the hero 
again to Algeria, but shows a decline of the novelist's powers. 
Tartarin thus remains with Daudet during his whole career. The 
Southern strain is continued in the main characters — though 
not in the setting — of Le Nabab (1877) and of Numa Roumes- 
tan (1881), which exhibits, more somberly than Tartarin, the 
clash between a meridional temperament and a Parisian environ- 
ment. But these two titles properly belong to Daudet's second 
division, the " grand roman de mceurs." In both of them, certain 
characters have been identified with actual personages: in the 
former appears a real " nabob," together with the Due de Morny, 
Sarah Bernhardt and others, very thinly disguised; whereas in 
Numa Roumestan we have an ironic depiction of the Provengal 
deputy who stakes his fortunes against the " homicidal North," 
and who wins out through native force and buoyancy. This is 
written in Daudet's final manner and is consequently a more 
intense and closely knit narrative than Le Nabab, which remains, 
however, one of the largest and most interesting canvases de- 
picting the Second Empire. No one excels Daudet in conveying 
the Parisian atmosphere, and his ornate " views " of the capital 
are memorable. Between these two novels he wrote Les Rois 



632 ZOLA, THE GONCOURTS, DAUDET 

en exil (again with a Parisian background), a title which needs 
no explanation today. Again, L'Immortel (1888) is a satire on 
the Academy, too bitter for Daudet's kindly nature. The great- 
est of this group of novels and the best known is Sapho (1884), 
a thorough study of the courtesan, her evil power and her en- 
vironment, but treated with a decent restraint not usually mani- 
fested by the Naturalists. 

Several other novels also reflect "les mceurs parisiennes," 
but they seem more particularly to store the vibrations of the 
author's own heart attuned to the misfortunes of humble folk. 
His son tells us that he preferred this class to any other, though 
he was compassionate towards all suffering and mischance. 
There is much of both in Fromont jeune et Risler aine (1874), 
nominally the tale of an industrial partnership, but really con- 
cerned with the drama of the wicked Sidonie and her deceived 
husband; the household of the poverty-stricken Delobelles also 
comes in for a good share of the interest and offers a parallel 
with Dickens in the alternation of humor and pathos. Jack 
(1876) deals with other failures and presents particularly the 
story of an unhappy child (cf. David C opperfield) . L'Evan- 
geliste indignantly attacks the effects of religious proselytizing 
and mania. 

Though influenced by the currents of his time, especially by 

Naturalism and impressionism, Daudet is not a severe and im- 

TT . _ . partial recorder of the world's woes. He is too 

His Talent r . •• 

sympathetic and emotional wholly to represent 

scientific Naturalism. He comes nearest it in Sapho, and even 
there his personality shines through the somber picture. Again, 
Daudet is primarily a raconteur who loves to tell a story, and his 
novels are more fully novels than the so-called fiction of Zola. 
Daudet knows how to choose and make salient " les domin- 
antes " of character and incident. By interweaving moral and 
physical qualities he makes his chief characters from the begin- 
ning stand out clearly ; yet he is rather too fond of the " gag," 
as when the lazy Delobelle perpetually asserts, " je n'ai pas le 
droit de renoncer a l'Art." Like Dickens, Daudet overworks 
pathos, and occasionally the Southern " charm " seems to wear a 
little thin. But behind all these traits there stand (1) the 
method of the Realist and (2) the style of the impressionist. 



DAUDET'S METHOD 633 

The method appears in his choice of specialized subjects, of 
ample background and sharply etched foreground; also in his 
habit of persistent note-taking, a habit which resulted in 
thousands of perfectly rendered scenes and objects; also in his 
knowledge of and respect for " la vie " rather than in the bookish 
kind of documentation ; finally, in that very sympathy with the 
humble which, as Brunetiere claims, has been found in Russia 
and England to be compatible with the best Realism. Nor 
does this novelist slight the depiction of the more interesting 
and attractive aspects of life. The artistic side of Daudet and 
probably his friendship with E. de Goncourt inclined him 
towards a modified type of impressionism in writing. Just as 
sensitive as the Goncourts to external objects, he contrives to 
present them adequately without making them dominate; a 
favorite device is to make things symbolize a soul-state, as 
where Desiree Delobelle's thwarted aspirations are typified by 
the stuffed birds with which she decorates bonnets. Daudet 's 
winged style gives the thrill of an individual reaction to reality, 
but he was able to accomplish this without the elaborate manner 
and vocabulary of the Goncourts. His language, for all its 
variety and picturesqueness, is clear and not recherche; its 
movement is more easy and conversational than that of other 
French Realists. Of them all, Daudet is on many accounts the 
most acceptable to an Anglo-Saxon public. 



BOOK VIII 
THE AGE OF SCIENCE AND DOUBT 

CHAPTER I 
THE CRITICS: SAINTE-BEUVE 

All the movements of the nineteenth century are mirrored in 
criticism, a genre which greatly increases in productiveness, 
The Course influence and complexity during this period. A 
of Criticism history of French Criticism would find at least one- 
half of its material in the last century alone. Like other 
fields of thought, the genre became definitely historical in ap- 
proach; later it endeavored to borrow its method from the 
natural sciences as well. These and other varieties will emerge 
from a brief sketch of the form. Accepting the formula of 
" literature as the expression of society," modern criticism was 
born at the beginning of the century. As already seen, cosmo- 
politan comparison waxed great with Mme de Stael and was 
continued by Villemain. The latter placed the individual writer 
in his historical setting, where Sainte-Beuve more firmly fixes 
him. This high priest of criticism is Protean in his viewpoints; 
judicial because of his taste, yet biographical, historical and 
finally approximating a scientific method. The deterministic 
philosophy is appropriated by Taine, the evolutionary by 
Brunetiere. Personal impressionism was added by Anatole 
France and Jules Lemaitre. The chief defenders of the Classical 
standard were Nisard, Scherer and Brunetiere; we shall now 
consider the first of these three. 1 

The most characteristic work of Desire Nisard (1806-88), 

professor and publicist, is comprised in his Essais 

sur I'ecole romantique and in his monumental His- 

toire de la litterature frangaise (1844-61). The former book, 

1 For Brunetiere, France and Lemaitre, see Bk. IX, Ch. IV. Edmond Scherer 
(1815-89) was a Genevan divine who lost his faith in Calvinism and settled in Paris. 
He stood apart from the main literary movements, but his Etudes critiques sur 
la litterature contemporaine (1863-95) contain some excellent criticism. 

634 



HIS CAREER 635 

in spite of Nisard's efforts towards fairness, is virtually an in- 
dictment of Romanticism, and the latter remained for long the 
best exposition and eulogy of the French Classical period. 
Nisard maintains that this " epoque unique " saw an amalgama- 
tion of the French and of the (general) human spirit that can 
hardly occur again. He tends to make humanity equivalent to 
France, and France equivalent to the Age of Louis XIV. Adopt- 
ing the " point of perfection " theory, 2 he views everything before 
the seventeenth century as a preparation, everything after it as a 
decline. Then only did the French genius reach its full powers of 
clearness and precision: "l'expression des verites generates dans 
un langage parfait." Then only did the " two antiquities," 
Christian and pagan, move harmoniously together. Nisard holds 
by tradition, both because of its disciplinary value and because 
tradition alone is the guarantee of lasting literary excellence. 
So " for sixty years," says Dowden, " Nisard was a guardian 
of the dignity of French letters." 

We must go back to the days of Romanticism to understand 
Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve (1804-69), the greatest and most 
Career of universal of French critics. The successive phases 
Sainte-Beuve f fa s jjf e contributed to form his supple talent and 
to provide his manifold interests. Born at Boulogne-sur-Mer, 
he was carefully reared by women ; as a youth he showed a studi- 
ous disposition and some religious propensities. These were 
promptly submerged in the skeptical air of Paris, whither he went 
in 1818. He declared that his intellectual fond was derived from 
such materialists and free-thinkers as Destutt de Tracy, Lamarck 
and Daunou. This tendency was increased by an intermittent 
study of medicine, which left in him a leaning towards physiol- 
ogy and positivism. In 1824 he joined the editors of the Globe 
(see Bk. VI, Ch. I), and for this journal he wrote many of the 
articles subsequently collected in the Premiers lundis. After 
1827 he became intimate with Hugo and identified himself with 
Romanticism — the only cause, he tells us, to which he fully sur- 
rendered himself and that " by the effect of a charm." The spell 
was wrought partly by Victor Hugo, partly by Hugo's wife, and 
thus inspired Sainte-Beuve composed his poetry and fiction. He 
also gave ancestors to Romanticism in the Tableau de la poesie 

2 See above, pp. 343 and 416. 



636 THE CRITICS: SAINTE-BEUVE 

jrancaise au XV I e siecle (1828) , and he ranked as one of the most 
influential members of the school. But after 1830 he gradually 
detached himself, breaking with Hugo and passing on to other 
" conversions." None of these was whole-souled, but for a time 
he showed an interest in Saint-Simonism, then in the liberal 
Catholicism of Lamennais and his group. An opposing tendency- 
was encouraged by Sainte-Beuve's connection with Swiss Calvin- 
ism; this connection was formed through his friendship with the 
Oliviers, a young couple whom he visited at Lausanne (1837). 
Throughout his youth, Sainte-Beuve was subject to moods of 
religious speculation and feeling, manifest particularly in his 
letters to the Abbe Bar be; but this influence resulted in no trans- 
formation of his life and thought ; its most important consequence 
was the masterly study of the Jansenists in his Port-Royal 
(1840-60). 

In the meantime, Sainte-Beuve had become well established as 
a Parisian and as a critic. He frequented the aristocratic salons 
of Mme Recamier and others, but he scarcely shone as a man of 
the world. Although epicurean in his tastes for pleasure, he 
lived frugally and worked hard. During the two decades of the 
bourgeois monarchy he was writing for the Revue de Paris and 
the Revue des deux mondes most of the articles later collected 
in the Portraits contemporains (1869-71) and the Portraits lit- 
ter aires (1862-64). His reputation was steadily growing, and 
he was made a member of the Academy in 1844. But when the 
Revolution of 1848 occurred, Sainte-Beuve found himself ill at 
ease in Paris and accepted an invitation from Liege, where he 
delivered lectures on Chateaubriand. The resulting volumes 
(Chateaubriand et son groupe litteraire) mark his final break 
with Romanticism and his inauguration of a bolder and more 
judicial critical standard. Returning to Paris, he was soon en- 
gaged in writing for periodicals his famous Causeries du lundi 
(1851-62), followed by the Nouveaux lundis (publ. 1863-70). 
These weekly articles practically filled the remainder of his life, 
for Sainte-Beuve too became an " anchorite of labor," scarcely 
leaving his task except for participation in the Magny dinners 
(see p. 627) and for duties connected with two lectureships. He 
became more political in his outlook, wrote a volume defending 
the socialist Proudhon, and was made a senator of the Empire 



HIS VERSE AND FICTION 637 

(1864). But he sat in the Opposition and delivered towards the 
end of his life the boldest speeches of a rather cautious career. 
Sainte-Beuve was intellectually honest and never sold his pen; 
but in human relations he was sly and variable, not trustworthy 
as a friend and not notable for high qualities of heart or soul. 
He was a mental giant, well-nigh complete in his critical equip- 
ment, and his most marked trait was the mobility or curiosity 
which drew him from one field of inquiry to another. The crea- 
tive efforts of his youth were also fruitful for his critical career; 
they gave him unusual insight into the processes of poetry and 
fiction. But they were not beneficial either to his character or 
to his reputation. 

The fact is that these volumes, whether connected with the 
author's late adolescence or with the amorous experiences of 
Poetry and his early manhood, are noted for their morbid tone. 
Fiction The yie, Poesies et Pensees de Joseph Delorme 

(1829) presents a descendant of Rene and of Adolphe, who is 
also the alter ego and the weaker ego of Sainte-Beuve. The 
poems constitute a moral autobiography, in their display of 
self-analysis and of epicurean desires. Certain lyrics develop 
another strain, an attempted rendering of common life, in the 
manner of Wordsworth; the volume is the most interesting ex- 
ample of this influence in France. Again, a critical and intellec- 
tual note is prominent, especially when the author characterizes 
his contemporaries (for example, Promenade, Mes livres). So 
the poems have been well summarized as " individualistes et 
romantiques, originales par le ton democratique, l'inspiration 
intime, la tendance critique." Joseph Delorme, which at least 
widened the scope of the lyric, is Sainte-Beuve's most important 
volume of verse and gives the key to the others. Similar strains 
are found in the Consolations (1830) and the Pensees d'Aout 
(1837). His novel, Volupte (1834), is according to Sainte- 
Beuve's own avowal " tres peu un roman " and again reflects 
the experience of a self-indulgent, analytical and weak-willed 
person. There is much religiosity in this novel; it ends in 
a conversion in which the writer himself hardly participated. 

Sainte-Beuve's critical work is very extensive, amounting to 
forty-eight volumes. Three main periods of his activity, though 
with some overlapping, may be indicated. The first (1824- 



638 THE CRITICS: SAINTE-BEUVE 

1840) is his youthful Romantic period and includes, together 
with the Tableau (see above) and the Premiers lundis, many of 
Criticism: the earlier articles in the Portraits litteraires. The 
Divisions and second (c. 1835-1848) represents a more neutral 
Campaigns anQ i conservative type of criticism, but remains 
appreciative rather than judicial. This period includes the 
various volumes of Portraits, written for the two principal re- 
views and addressed largely to feminine readers. The third 
period (1848-69) finds Sainte-Beuve in his maturity alike as 
judicial critic and as historian of literature. Its point of de- 
parture is the attack on Chateaubriand, and it embraces the two 
great series of the Lundis. 

The term " Romantic critic " implies both that Sainte-Beuve 
was romantically disposed and that he became the best critical 
First Period ex P os ^ or °* the movement. His close association 
with the Hugos and his own creative efforts made 
his expression more personal, passionate and rhetorical than 
was later the case. But the rupture of these ties presently 
caused him to break with the school, and he admits many 
variations in judgment due to the rise and fall of his 
Romantic sympathies. This then is his least impartial period. 
Yet his keen understanding of the movement will appear from 
certain examples. Of his four articles on Victor Hugo, the 
first (1827) established Sainte-Beuve as the critical master of 
the new school. He points out exactly those merits and defects 
that posterity has accepted in the case of Hugo. Later the 
critic congratulates the poet on freeing himself from the 
preciosity of the early cenacle and on attaining wider effects. 
The novels of Hugo are not impartially considered, nor is Sainte- 
Beuve fair to Vigny. On the other hand, he excellently sums up 
Lamartine, admiring his spirituality and limpidity. As late 
as 1857, Sainte-Beuve wrote a finely reminiscent article on 
Musset, which carries critic and reader back into the old 
Romantic atmosphere. The poet's endearing qualities and his 
tragic fate are dwelt upon almost with a sense of personal loss. 
This note of personal friendly interest recurs in articles on Hugo, 
George Sand and others. It is true that Sainte-Beuve was sub- 
ject to feelings of envy and malice where the Romantic leaders 
were concerned; but when these feelings were not aroused, he 



PERIODS OF CRITICISM 639 

was capable of the greatest insight and sympathy. M. Michaut 
esteems him the panegyrist and interpreter of Romanticism, 
enthusiastic, but with a taste and a sense of proportion which 
caused him to make certain reserves. He gave currency to the 
lyrical ideas and theories of the group, for whom, says the same 
authority, he served both as a Du Bellay and a Boileau; it was 
his task to " introduire, legitimer et formuler le romantisme " — 
and he tried to moderate its excesses as well. 

In 1840, Sainte-Beuve published two articles that definitely 
indicate his abandonment of the Romantic cause. He declares 
that the essay on La Rochefoucauld " marks the end of this 
crisis and the return of sounder views." The other article, Dix 
ans apres en litter ature, amounts to a journalistic summary of 
what Romanticism had accomplished in the previous decade. 
A certain bias and impatience appear in his colder reckoning 
with his former admiration. These " illustrious incurables " lack 
stability — or else they have simply marked time. Sainte-Beuve 
further announces that he himself has finally turned from poetry 
to criticism. This resolution was taken after the failure of the 
Pensees d'Aout. As Sainte-Beuve profoundly said: 

II se trouve, dans les trois quarts des hommes, un poete qui 
meurt jeune, tandis que rhomme survit. 

The " man " and his intelligence are thus chiefly conspicuous 
in the second phase of Sainte-Beuve's critical productiveness. 
Second Here he lays a broad foundation for his biographical 

Period method. Indeed, as a Romantic critic he had sought 

the writer's moi in his biography and intimate psychology and 
was disposed to judge a work according to the individuality of 
its talent and expression. Now the three series of " Portraits " 
(Portraits litter aires, Portraits de Femmes, Portraits contempo- 
rains) exemplify the author's lasting interest in the individual, 
as well as the constant ripening of his ever-curious mind. Even 
the Port-Royal has been styled a collection of portraits. Sainte- 
Beuve's curiosity recalls that of Bayle, who was treated in an 
early article (1835) as a leading representative of the critical 
spirit. The two men were also alike in their fondness for gossip, 
their insinuative tactics, their tolerant sense of relativity in 
human and literary affairs. Sainte-Beuve's manner during 



640 THE CRITICS: SAINTE-BEUVE 

this period combines ease and finish, and has an engaging " libre 
allure." His attitude is more disinterested. After traversing 
his intermediary " campaigns," in behalf of Lamennais and Saint- 
Simon, the critic ceases* to be a propagandist and becomes a free 
and impartial voice (1833-37). His essays are concerned some- 
what less with aesthetic and more with moral and philosophical 
questions. Gradually he conceives of a " genie critique/' which 
though remaining primarily portraiture can include philosoph- 
ical and psychological considerations; which through its uni- 
versal curiosity and its finished form can itself become " cre- 
ative," a work of art. The best essays of the forties show Sainte- 
Beuve established in his own field. At the end of this period 
he was ready for a new campaign. 

A whole book might be written on the relations of Sainte- 
Beuve and Chateaubriand, and indeed Sainte-Beuve himself has 
The written it. Chateaubriand et son groupe litteraire, 

Transition composed in voluntary exile, is mainly an indictment 
of Romanticism and of its illustrious godfather. Sainte-Beuve 
now formally assumes the role of a judge. He points out why he 
need no longer listen to the oracle with bated breath. " II est 
temps que pour lui la vie critique commence." Sainte-Beuve 
still considers Chateaubriand an incomparable artist, possessed 
of an " extraordinary elevation." But the critic assails the pagan 
passion, the mal de Rene, and a certain insincere rhetoric which 
strives after glory rather than after truth or virtue. Of this 
glory the idol is vigorously stripped; and though Sainte-Beuve 
shows a bourgeois animosity in the act, yet his main desire is 
to arrive at the truth. Such a desire is expressed in the fol- 
lowing pronunciamento, which may be taken as a prelude to 
the mature excellence of the Lundis: 

Degage de tout role presque de tout lien, observant de pres 
depuis bientot vingt-cinq ans les choses et les personnages lit- 
teraires, n'ayant aucun interet a ne pas les voir tels qu'ils sont, 
je puis dire que je regorge de verites. 

Certain general features of the Causeries du lundi and of the 
Nouveaux lundis may at once be predicated. We may now per- 
ceive, says Mr. Brownell of Sainte-Beuve, " how thoroughly 
and in what classic spirit he rationalized his early Romanticism." 



HIS METHOD 641 

He is more thoughtful and less soulful. The eulogies of his 
early period, as well as the insinuations of his middle years, are 
less conspicuous. His interpretation deepens and be- 
comes more widely historical. The magisterial hand 
is always there and usually the judicial mind. Everything that 
concerns the author and his environment is now taken up, but the 
man himself is still made the center of Sainte-Beuve's analysis. 
To this principle he clings throughout his career, though with 
increasing system and science. Both are visible in an article 
of 1862 (again on Chateaubriand), which is usually esteemed 
the most important of Sainte-Beuve's critical manifestoes. Here 
, he links the statement of a thorough biographical 

and psychological method together with a Natural- 
istic theory regarding "les families d'esprits." These families 
of minds consist of groups who show the same mental heredity 
(for instance, Horace, Boileau, Pope) . The day will come, says 
the critic, when these species will be determined and grouped, 
and the result will be a new impetus for psychology and litera- 
ture. But Sainte-Beuve makes only a limited use of this theory 
and admits that he is chiefly concerned with composing separate 
monographs. His method is implicit in the motto, " Tel arbre, tel 
fruit." As a judge, he cannot reckon with the literary product 
independently of the producer. Then there follows an inventory 
of the items that constitute the biographical approach: the in- 
dividual's race, his family, his early associates, the whole story 
of his youth; he should be studied in the first flush of success 
and the first symptoms of decay; his attitude towards religion, 
nature, women and money, his disciples and enemies, his health 
and habits should be closely examined. Every writer has an 
"essential vice," and most of them have a keynote or faculte 
maitresse which can be summed up in an illuminating phrase. 
Taine and the Naturalists did much to develop these last two 
points. 

Did Sainte-Beuve himself apply the scheme thus outlined? 
Not scientifically, not methodically, and not with an effort to 
use all the above categories on every author discussed. He was 
always too artistic to let the skeleton show through the flesh. 
But it has recently been shown that Sainte-Beuve does, in the 
majority of his articles, select from this program according 



642 THE CRITICS: SAINTE-BEUVE 

to the individual case. His view of character-study requires a 
modified adherence to a system which must have been in his 
mind long before the article of 1862. 

Yet Sainte-Beuve remains an artist in technique and stand- 
point. It is frequently according to an " acte de gout " rather 
Art ana than by any elaborate analysis that he makes or sug- 
Truth g es ^ s hjg judicial decisions. His standards are 

taste, truth to life, tradition, and artistic logic or unity. The 
greatest of these are taste and truth. In matters of poetry 
and form he generally cleaves to aesthetic judgments. By 
such standards he seeks to tone down the excesses both of 
the Romantic and of the Naturalistic schools; from the same 
principle derives his gentle mockery of mere erudition. To 
acquire a taste, he proposes no formulas, he only prescribes a 
great variety of reading. He has scarcely any system of aes- 
thetics, but he has an infinite discernment. It is partly this side 
of him that Matthew Arnold considers when he calls Sainte- 
Beuve " a perfect critic — a critic of measure, not exuberant; of 
the center, not provincial; of keen industry and curiosity, with 
1 truth ' for his motto." Truth was at the core of him, thinks 
Arnold, and he points out how Sainte-Beuve frankly revised his 
judgments. This is borne out by many passages, notably by 
the apostrophe to " Reality " in connection with the Naturalistic 
school: " Realite, tu es le fond de la vie!" Though shorn of 
sentiment and idealism, " je t'accepterai encore . . . pauvre et 
mediocre . . . mais prise sur le fait, mais sincere." Not always 
impartial, Sainte-Beuve is careful about accuracy in matters of 
detail; and he aims more and more at candor and the whole truth. 

But this " myriad-minded " critic is not limited to biography, 
taste or scientific truth. His vision is ever widening, his insight 
Historical ever deepening. Neither does he remain in the 
Approach judicial mood, he frequently forbears to pronounce 
his decision. In fact, he tends in the later Lundis to become 
more historical in outlook, and this is the last of his main char- 
acteristics. For instance, the individual writer is often placed 
in his historical period and setting. Villemain had started this 
practice, but Villemain's figures are shaky in their frame as com- 
pared with the dexterous workmanship of Sainte-Beuve. His 
seventeenth and eighteenth-century studies are particularly good 



SUMMARY 643 

examples of interweaving history and portraiture. His knowl- 
edge and sense of relativity make him thoroughly discriminate 
between the various epochs. Nor is the environment allowed 
to subdue the individual, as in the deterministic theory of Taine. 
Also Sainte-Beuve, in his later work, leans more towards the 
depiction of historical personages — generals, statesmen, great 
ladies — instead of simply criticizing authors. Finally, he is 
historical in his growing self-effacement and in his indifference 
to absolute verdicts. 

Many other sides might be taken up: his thorough humanism, 
emphasized by most of his critical compeers (cf. Qu'est-ce qu'un 

. . classique? and De la tradition en litter ature) : his 

Conclusion 

humanity which glows through his humanism and 

allows tradition to include everything worth while; his dualism 
of mind and body, his epicurean sympathies, his irony and his 
light touch; his devotion to literature, which he never deserted 
for another call; the richness, the delightful diversity and the 
charm of his treatment. Let us glance at his cosmopolitan 
range. A collection of one thousand articles will evidently deal 
with many things besides French literature, though that pre- 
dominates. Sainte-Beuve welcomed the study of Greek and 
Latin antiquity, the Middle Ages, the Orient, England and Italy. 
In any or all of these periods he is occasionally silent regarding 
the greatest figures, apparently because they are less representa- 
tive. He is not concerned with elaborate methods of compara- 
tive literature, but he throws an impartial light on many writers 
from Firdusi to Wordsworth. His versatile talent likewise takes 
toll from religion and science, politics and history. A manifold 
mind, he has also a manifold style. He held that the critic should 
not commit himself to any style, but should let it vary with the 
subject. This subordination and suppleness he practices par- 
ticularly in the Lundis, eschewing the rhetoric of earlier essays, 
though still effectively using figures and the picturesque. He 
is fond of quotations, by way of illustrating the author. 
Occasionally he is too journalistic and diffuse. But his style 
is generally clear and fresh, without obvious mannerisms, and 
carrying conviction. Sainte-Beuve's morality and spirituality 
may be questioned, but rarely his intellectual probity. He was 
variable, not venal. He holds to the rights of reason and 



6U THE CRITICS: SAINTE-BEUVE 

neutrality (not indifference) and advocates for purposes of 
critical divination an " energetic self-surrender." It is true that 
he had more ideas than Voltaire, more knowledge and pene- 
tration than Arnold. When we add his habitual urbanity and 
truth -seeking, the orchestration of his composite method, his 
taste and influence, we must recognize in Sainte-Beuve the 
greatest of modern critics. 



CHAPTER II 
THE PHILOSOPHERS: COMTE, TAINE, RENAN 

The struggle between religious faith on the one hand and 
science or skepticism on the other became a leading issue in 
Science and the last half of the century. This struggle has 
Doubt b een traced in the development of Sainte-Beuve 

and suggested in the criticism of Scherer. The latter, like 
certain English agnostics, preserved a high standard of morality 
after the loss of his Calvinistic beliefs. In philosophy, a deep 
influence upon French thought was exerted by the discoveries 
of Darwin (Origin of Species, French translation, 1862) and, to 
a lesser extent, by the speculations of Mill and Spencer. There 
appeared a formidable array of scientists, typified by Claude 
Bernard and his contacts with Realism. 1 New interpretations 
of natural phenomena prevented, for many minds, belief in 
Catholicism. As in England (George Eliot, Matthew Arnold), 
many thinkers could find faith only in " honest doubt." Others 
sought for various " reconciliations " between the scientific and 
the religious principle; of these the most remarkable example 
was Auguste Comte, whose master was Saint-Simon. 

Henri de Saint-Simon, a descendant of the memoir-writer and 
an original social theorist, had two main ideas: that of making 
a " science generate " or a synthesis of useful knowledge ; and 
that of governing industrial society by a hierarchy of savants, 
the priests of his new Christianity. Both of these ideas were 
c incorporated into the system of Auguste Comte 

(1798-1857). Comte began as a obscure teacher 
of mathematics, passed through Saint-Simonism and a severe 
nervous illness, was given a position at the Ecole Poly technique, 
from which he was removed in 1844, and published his notable 
Cours de philosophie positive (6 vols., 1839-42). This earlier 
part of his life and thought was marked by great diligence, in- 

« See above, Bk. VII, Ch. V. 

645 



646 PHILOSOPHERS: COMTE, TAINE, RENAN 

tellectual power and a predilection for " positive " facts and 
ideas. But about 1845 he suffered a change of heart. He had 
already been separated from his wife, and now he met a Mme de 
Vaux, whose influence, especially after her death, had a pro- 
nounced spiritual effect upon Comte. His mind was turned 
into channels of mysticism and singularity. His character be- 
came more and more difficult. Staunch supporters, such as 
J. S. Mill and Littre, fell away from him. Both of these men 
had been active in obtaining subsidies for Comte, who lived 
largely upon private benefactions during his last years. He 
published additions to his philosophic theory (" System of Poli- 
tics," " Catechism," etc.) and became active in the establish- 
ment of the College of Positivism and the Religion of Humanity, 
with himself as high priest. But it is in the earlier Cours de 
philosophie positive that we must look for his most substantial 
contributions to thought. 

Comte participated in the reconstructive and humanitarian 
movement that characterized the decade before 1848. Such 
The Positive writers as George Sand, Fourier, P. Leroux, 
Philosophy Proudhon and even Michelet were then noted for 
their ardor in the cause of social regeneration. Comte differs 
from this group in that he is less Utopian and more cautious in 
his approach to social and political reform. Such reform de- 
pends, he held, upon society's beliefs, and therefore a thorough 
philosophic grounding is the first essential. But this in turn 
must reckon with all the accretions of modern science, and so 
the leading idea of Comte's first period was to " transformer la 
science en philosophie." Positivism, in the earlier sense, means 
the study of phenomena and their laws; as regards this philos- 
ophy, says Mill, Comte is the first who attempted its complete 
systematization and the scientific extension of it to all objects 
of human knowledge. But it will occur to the reader that we 
have already had occasion to use such terms as " positive " and 
" positivist," especially in connection with eighteenth-century 
thought. In fact, Comte is a more modern philosophe, depend- 
ent upon such predecessors as Voltaire and Diderot, Descartes 
and Leibnitz. He has the great advantage, however, of deeper 
and more systematic knowledge. The Cours de philosophie em- 
braces and synthesizes the exact and the natural sciences as well 



POSITIVISM 647 

as history and sociology. Comte's most fertile generalizations 
are along four main lines. First, the " scale of subordination " 
of the sciences not only distinguishes between the abstract and 
the concrete but arranges the former " in an ascending series 
according to the degree of complexity of their phenomena " 
(Mill). Secondly, he holds that Sociology tops the scale and 
requires the use of all the other fields of knowledge. It may 
be said, then, that Comte was the first to found a sociological 
method and to emphasize the importance of the nascent science. 
To this end he made a thorough survey of history, and his third 
contribution is a philosophy of history which is most enlight- 
ening in its consideration of causes and leaders. Finally, he 
distinguishes between the three phases of humanity's develop- 
ment: the first was Theological with its successive divisions 
of Fetichism, Polytheism and Monotheism; the second was 
Metaphysical, where abstract ideas (" the gradual disembodi- 
ment of a Fetish") were still considered as powerful entities; 
the third is the Positive stage, which, though it does not 
deny the supernatural, insists on attainable facts and the 
scientific interpretation thereof. Similarly, each science has at 
different times gone through the three phases: for example, the 
passage from alchemy and astrology to their modern counterparts. 
Comte thus naturally believes in Progress and in the consensus 
of human efforts towards a better civilization. In his sociology, 
Comte follows Saint-Simon in declaring for the rule of the Posi- 
tive savants curiously linked with the captains of industry; his 
insistence on this hierarchy is rather dogmatic. This tendency, 
as well as self-conceit and a hieratic attitude, becomes conspic- 
uous in his later writings when he turned Positivism into the 
Religion of Humanity. His point of departure is perfectly just 
— that it is the service of humanity, the "grand Etre," that 
chiefly counts. But when he tries to convert this rule of life into 
a creed, with worship of great men and inspiring women, with 
set observances, a calendar of saints' days, ritual for private 
and public prayer, excessive systematizing, and much dealing 
with mystical numbers, the effort fails and becomes partially 
ridiculous. This is probably the reason why Positivism, which 
still exists as a church, has only a limited number of adherents 
in France. Yet it deeply influenced men like Littre and Taine. 



648 PHILOSOPHERS: COMTE, TAINE, RENAN 

In Brazil, a substantial body of Comtists can still be found. 
In England, where the movement took root early, its best prin- 
ciples were made known by Mill and G. H. Lewes. Frederic 
Harrison was its ardent disciple, and its highest endeavor was 
expressed in George Eliot's beautiful poem of the " Choir 
Invisible." 

Comte was not a good writer and did not have the literary 
power and interest of Taine, who is likewise primarily a. philoso- 
pher. Hippolyte Taine (1828-93) was born at 
Vouziers in the Ardennes ; the severity of this coun- 
try left its mark upon his spirit. His life is mainly a " bio- 
graphie intellectuelle," and even his correspondence contains 
little personal detail. He was reared in simple and industrious 
surroundings, then taken to Paris, where for seven years he was a 
day pupil at the College Bourbon. His reflective disposition de- 
clared itself early, together with a tendency towards delicate 
health. Realizing that his vocation was the study of philosophy, 
he entered the Ecole Normale (1845) with a brilliant group of 
fellow-students — Prevost-Paradol, E. About, F. Sarcey. Here 
Taine amassed much knowledge of metaphysics, history, litera- 
ture, and later of science. He was refused his diploma (agrega- 
tion) because of the theological leanings of his judges and was 
sent to teach in the provinces. As an " intellectual," he reacted 
against this environment, resigned his position and came back to 
Paris to take his doctorate and write critical articles. These and 
his monographs gradually gave him fame, and he was made pro- 
fessor at the Ecole des Beaux- Arts (1864). In the same year 
appeared his notable Histoire de la litterature anglaise. For a 
time he was able to turn to his favorite philosophical studies, then 
the war of 1870 precipitated him into another path. As a patri- 
otic monument, a contribution to the recovery of his country, 
Taine wrote Les Origines de la France contemporaine, which 
occupied him for twenty years. At his death he ranked as one of 
the foremost critical authorities in France. In character he was 
gentle and reserved, but his intellect was bold, hard and 
encyclopedic. 

A record of Taine's mental development could be written only 
by establishing his relations with many thinkers of his own and 
the preceding period. For example, he drew from Hegel his phi- 



TAINE'S POINT OF VIEW 649 

losophy of history, from Comte the formula of the milieu (see 
below ), and in the English positivists and utilitarians 
Taine found material to substantiate his scientific 
dogmatism and his philosophic determinism. Receptive of many 
elements, his mind yet remains original in its assimilative and 
organizing power. There are two distinct sides to his intelligence. 
Lemaitre calls him a " poete-logician." On the one hand, as 
Taine himself said, " ma forme d'esprit est franchise et latine." 
That is, he had the Classical habit of orderly analysis and clear 
expression; this was modernized by the scientific passion for note- 
taking and for the "petit fait vrai." On the other hand, he 
had a Teutonic imagination and some remains of Romantic 
sensibility. His " genie poetique " appears in his faculty for 
large creative constructions, in his metaphysical melancholy 
and especially in his style, which offers a succession of brilliant 
images and metaphors. This double gift allows Taine to ap- 
preciate such opposites as German idealism and English common 
sense, as well as a poet like Musset and a psychologist like 
Stendhal. But it left him with a divided mind and a troubled 
soul. 

In fact, Taine well exemplifies the conflict between the scien- 
tific temper and the demands of our spiritual nature. The former 
tendency apparently won the victory, for Taine 
could not rest in skepticism. His attitude towards 
" la science " (which he rather confuses with philosophy) is 
significant of his whole generation. About 1848, Taine, like 
Renan, set up absolute science as an ideal and a faith'. This 
was confirmed by his career at the Ecole Normale and later by 
his specialistic studies in physiology, anatomy, chemistry, so- 
ciology, etc. His style, in the sixties, abounds in scientific com- 
parisons and metaphors (cf. George Eliot and Sainte-Beuve) . 
Finally, he held to the Hegelian idea of the unity of all science, 
and thus he came to his great generalization that moral or 
human phenomena, like those of the physical world, obey in- 
variable laws. This is the doctrine of determinism. Taine even 
declared that " vice and virtue are products like sugar and 
vitriol " — and are just as susceptible of a qualitative analysis. 
He saw the history of literature and literature itself as fields 
for psychological investigation. In short, he applied a uni- 



650 PHILOSOPHERS: COMTE, TAINE, RENAN 

versal determinism, and his favorite book De V Intelligence 
(1870) gives the doctrine of which his other books are illus- 
trations: he makes all knowledge proceed from the sensations, 
and he conceives of nature as the reign of law, which should be 
extended to the operations of the mind. But as early as 1867 
Taine had written De VIdeal dans Vart (third volume of La 
Philosophic de Vart, 1865-69), admitting a hierarchy in moral 
and artistic values; and now the effects of the Franco-Prussian 
war turned him towards a more moralistic conception of history. 
Regrets for a changed Germany, doubts and prayers for a 
stricken France combined with an inbred pessimism to leave 
him without confidence in modern historical institutions {Les 
Origines). Also science seemed no longer the sole panacea, and 
in his old age Taine reverted to the social and individual neces- 
sity of some form of the Christian belief. 

As a whole, however, his work represents rather the deter- 
ministic and positive strain. In literary criticism, he applied too 
_ ... . rigidly a set of formulas. Chief among these are the 

doctrine of the " faculte maitresse " and the famous 
theory of " race, milieu et moment." As early as his Essai sur 
Tite-Live (1856), Taine is seeking for the master-faculty or the 
" trait caracteristique et dominant duquel tout peut se deduire 
geometriquement" In Livy, this dominant trait is found in 
the fact that he was an orator who became a historian. Taine 
thus explains many things in Livy's career — but he does not 
explain Livy. Still more categorical is the application of " race, 
milieu et moment " in the Histoire de la litterature anglaise 
(1864 f.). These three forces are viewed as precedent conditions, 
operating on a writer or a school. Race signifies the innate, the 
hereditary or racial disposition of the man ; milieu means environ- 
ment in the broadest sense, including climate and the atmospheric 
pressure of the political or religious creed ; moment indicates not 
only the time of an author's appearance but also the momentum 
or " vitesse acquise " in a given direction before he appeared. 
The system is evidently too rigid to be applied to English litera- 
ture, in which tradition counts less than the free play of indi- 
vidual characteristics. Taine is eternally recurring to the influ- 
ence of the Anglo-Saxon race, of the Norman Conquest, of the 
English soil. Furthermore, he is hampered by his obsession of the 



TAINE AS HISTORIAN 651 

Ideal Englishman, who is supposed to take on successive incarna- 
tions in Chaucer, Shakespeare, Shelley and others. Taine usually 
preferred English to French institutions. With all its faults, 
this monument of criticism has justly been called the history 
of English literature which comes nearest to being literature 
itself; it is written with a massive brilliance and with a 
cumulative power in the descriptive and analytical passages; 
and it contains many interesting ideas and contributions — 
for example, the studies of milieu in connection with the 
Restoration Drama and with Dickens. 2 Similar qualities are 
found in the various Essais de critique et d'histoire, in the second 
volume of which (Nouveaux essais, 1865) appeared the epoch- 
making article on Balzac. It would be evident from this article 
that Taine is by no means lacking in a sense of literary beauties. 
But he preferred to consider masterpieces as documents or as 
" signs " of the times. He made his taste and his imagina- 
tion subserve science. His criticism remains philosophic history, 
with the qualities and defects of such. The danger is that 
his philosophic " poise settles into immobility" (Brownell). 
Therefore Taine is more dogmatic and more ridden by his 
theories than Sainte-Beuve, from whom many of his principles 
derive. 

Taine's method appears at its height in the treatment of 
history. Conspicuous here are his constructive ability, the 
power of piling fact upon fact, and also, unfor- 
tunately, the predominance of fixed ideas. The 
Origines de la France contemporaine (1875-94) are composed 
of successive Parts, on the old monarchy, on the Revolution, 
on the Regime moderne (including Napoleon). Reacting from 
his experiences of the Commune (1871), the writer pens a strong 
indictment of the French Revolution, which he considers as a 
compound of anarchy and Jacobinism from the very start. He 
writes like a " pessimist in a passion," losing his impartiality 
and judgment. Here, as in his treatment of Napoleon, Taine 
allows himself a tone of moral indignation which scarcely agrees 
with his deterministic theories. Too often he has a case to 

» M. J. J. Jusserand was in his youth an admirer and a disciple of Taine's. His 
Histoire litteraire du peuple anglais (1894-1904) shows certain of Taine's princi- 
ples more cautiously applied and is more nearly the work of a specialist. 



652 PHILOSOPHERS: COMTE, TAINE, RENAN 

prove, he leaves the straight path of historic induction, and he 
simplifies too much in applying set formulas to men like Danton, 
Robespierre and Napoleon himself — that " condottiere of the 
Italian Renaissance." The Regime moderne is better in its ap- 
proximation to historical truth and its analysis of modern insti- 
tutions. But the Ancien Regime, often cited in these pages, is 
Taine's masterpiece as regards both penetration of the past and 
philosophic insight. Even here he makes too much of the 
Classical spirit and its influence upon the Revolution. Yet the 
author's two main qualities, his faculty of generalizing thought 
and the sweep and power of his objective, metallic, image-laden 
style, are most visible in this volume. He uses history, as he 
had used criticism, for philosophic ends. Thus in three fields 
Taine is par excellence " the philosopher and historian of the 
realistic and scientific movement." His methods were closely 
associated with those of the Naturalistic novel. Taine and Renan 
seem to have been the paramount influences upon the last 
generation of French writers. 

Ernest Renan (1823-92) was less of a logician than Taine and 
more of a critical historian. His imaginative feeling for the past 
was encouraged by his Breton upbringing; he was 
always sensitive to Celtic poetry and melancholy. 
Reared in poverty and in a clerical environment, he became a 
model boy and student. Attracting the attention of Monseigneur 
Dupanloup, Renan passed through three seminaries, ending at 
Saint-Sulpice. The raw youth was inducted successively into a 
classical education, contemporary literature and German philos- 
ophy. The last subject shook his faith, which was completely 
overthrown by the study of Semitic philology. This became his 
own special field. His honesty soon compelled him to leave the 
priesthood, a calling to which he was temperamentally well 
adapted. In this crisis of his fortunes, Renan was sustained 
by the devotion of his sister, Henriette, who was in turn his 
practical guide and his spiritual adviser. He taught in small 
schools, worked towards his university degrees and formed a 
fruitful association with Berthelot, the scientist. The young 
scholar wrote UAvenir de la Science (1849, publ. 1890). This 
chaotic and enthusiastic book is Renan's earliest profession of 
the scientific faith and contains several of his pet ideas, es- 



KENAN'S CAREER 653 

pecially that the world must be regenerated from the top and 
that the people should be guided by the savants (cf. Saint- 
Simon and Comte) . 

Renan was made an agrege of the University and finally a doc- 
tor. His thesis on Averroes et V Averro'isme (1852), dealing 

. r with Aristotelian doctrines among the Arabs, already 

reveals his interest in the origin and evolution of 
beliefs. He also published his Histoire generate des langues 
semitiques, and in the following year (1856) he married the niece 
of Ary Scheffer, the painter. Soon he became known as the writer 
of charming critical articles — on Marcus Aurelius, on Turgenev 
and especially the famous Essai sur la poesie des races celtiques. 
The most notable of these articles were collected in the Essais 
de morale et de critique (1859). They show Renan not only as 
concerned with questions of race — one of his chief preoccupa- 
tions — but also as passing into his second phase, that of the 
aesthete, interested alike in moral and in artistic beauty. This 
Second side of him was further stimulated by the voyage to 

Phase Syria and Palestine undertaken in company with 

his sister, who died abroad. It has been said that Henriette died 
in order that the Vie de Jesus might live. Much of this celebrated 
book (1863) was written spontaneously in Palestine, away from 
sources and authorities, and it is not strictly accurate in matters 
of exegesis and historical fact. But it is a work of genius in its 
poignancy, its sincerity and in the freshness of its romantic and 
human charm. Renan reconstructs and rationalizes the past, 
but he feels " la douceur de cette idylle sans pareille." For the 
first time the life of Christ was written from a layman's stand- 
point, so that all might read — and all did. The treatment, 
skeptical yet sympathetic, appealed to a wide circle of former 
believers and cultured folk. The book popularized the " higher 
criticism " of the Bible and gave its author a European celebrity. 
He was made a Professor in the College de France, but noisy 
manifestations in the lecture-room and on the streets led to his 
removal. The Vie de Jesus was the first volume in the epic series 
Third Phase: called Histoire des Origines du Christianisme. The 
the Scholar ser j es a i s0 comprises Les Apotres, St. Paid, L'Ante- 
christ, etc. (1866-81). For each of these volumes, Renan 
visited the appropriate historic site (Asia Minor or Rome) and 



654* PHILOSOPHERS: COMTE, TAINE, REN AN 

according to the method initiated in the Vie de Jesus, he linked 
with the religious story such consideration of geography, arche- 
ology, politics and the general milieu as would give solidity to 
the treatment. He carefully used original sources, with a full 
sense of their uncertainty, and with much historical tact or power 
of divination. This critical penetration is coupled with a gift for 
resurrecting ancient civilizations and religions. Renan " gave 
a voice to dead races." He and Comte made men realize that the 
predominance of past generations over the present is in the ratio 
of a hundred to one. Renan's vast knowledge of Oriental lan- 
guages, races and customs allowed him to introduce many com- 
parisons — perhaps too many — with other religions and with 
modern Eastern life. Similar methods were employed in his ex- 
tensive Histoire du peuple d' Israel (1887 f.), which connects with 
the previous series in that Israel paved the way for the coming 
of Christ. Renan again satisfies his passion for origins by show- 
ing how the nomadic tribes of Judea, their warrior-kings and 
especially their prophets, prepared the " royaume He Dieu." This 
phrase for him meant a devotion to the ideas and ideals which 
Christ best represents. Rejecting the divinity of the Messiah, 
as well as revelation and miracles, Renan's attitude towards 
Christianity remains sympathetic, as opposed to the scoffing 
of Voltaire, and is of course based on a much wider historical 
knowledge. He valued scholarship chiefly for the light that it 
throws on the human spirit. His career was crowned by his elec- 
tion to the French Academy, by his reappointment to the College 
de France, where he was presently made administrator, and by 
the editing of the learned Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum, 
which he preferred to any other of his works. 

But in the meantime Renan had entered on his last phase — 
which some have called his " dilettanteism." To understand this 
Fourth development, we must retrace our steps. Even be- 

Phase f ore ^h e war f 1370, Renan as a liberal had become 

interested in politics and was induced to stand for election as 
deputy. He was not elected, however, since his views were too 
theoretical for his constituents. The war disillusioned him con- 
cerning German idealism, nor was he satisfied with French 
democracy ; his opinions, expressed in the Reforme intellectuelle 
et morale de la France, were not well received. Henceforth he 



RENAN'S REMINISCENCES 655 

felt himself powerless in the realm of action, and his general dis- 
enchantment finds expression in the exquisite but bitter Dialogues 
philosophiques (1876). This form (as in the later Drames phi- 
losophiques) is well suited to the supple variety and shading of 
Renan's thought. Certain of his philosophical principles may 
at this point be summarized. He believes that there is no special 
Providence but rather an ideal principle in the universe, 
which may finally evolve into the royaume de Dieu. To this 
end all disinterested forms of effort should collaborate, whether 
in science, morality or art. Anything else is material and 
ephemeral. Renan still holds to the idea of an intellectual elite, 
which shall govern the stupid masses. Machinery, vulgarity 
and material luxury are among the modern deadly sins ; he prefers 
cloistered study and even pagan art, as is visible in L' Antichrist. 
More and more he takes the spectacular view of the universe. 
Thus his final manner is marked by a growing skepticism, an 
indifference to many issues, and a bewildering habit of self-con- 
tradiction. Also his moral tone relaxes and he becomes very 
indulgent to human weaknesses. All this may be considered 
dilettanteism, if we remember that Renan himself remained a 
hard and honest worker and that the dilettante habit of mind 
became much more pronounced in his disciples. 

In his later years, Renan was something of a social oracle 
and entertainer. He carried into the world the priestly unction 
Renan in which he never lost, his " fleeting " epicureanism and 
Retrospect ^is sm iij n g disenchantment. Part of his moral 
biography is conveyed in the Souvenirs d'enfance et de jeunesse 
(1883) , in which the author is once more concerned with origins — 
the origins of Renan. These delightful pages contain not only 
reminiscences but childhood tales narrated by his mother; they 
emphasize the Breton influences on his youth, the value of his 
clerical education, and the story of why he left the priesthood. 
The sentimental side of Renan appears in the Souvenirs, the 
thoughtful side in the undramatic Drames philosophiques (1888). 
Of these the most significant are L'Abbesse de Jouarre and Le 
Pretre de Nemi; the latter concerns a priest of Diana and the 
evolution of a religious belief. Shakespeare's figures are also 
reviewed symbolically, and Prospero the thinker becomes recon- 
ciled with Caliban, who is democracy. Towards the end, Renan 



656 PHILOSOPHERS: COMTE, TAINE, RENAN 

shows more optimistic tendencies as regards both this world and 
the next. He comes to define life as a " charmante promenade a 
travers la realite." His style was graceful, languorous, insinuat- 
ing, romantic in its subjectivism and sentiment. His origi- 
nality has been described as a compound of " sincerity and irony, 
of skepticism mixed with the habit of religious speech." He was 
one of the leaders of his time, he profoundly affected the modern 
conception of religious history, and influenced, through his 
writings and personal magnetism, such men as Bourget and 
Barres, Vogue and Anatole France. 



CHAPTER III 

MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS 

We shall consider here certain historians, moralists and poly- 
graphs who wrote mainly in the second half of the century. 
Edgar Quinet (1803-75) was primarily a historian. 
Quinet The life . long f r j en( i f Michelet, whom he resembled 

in ardent imagination and idealism, Quinet was by birth-right 
a Romanticist; but his work extended into the Second Empire 
and underwent the influences of that period. Through residence 
and marriage, Quinet became well acquainted with Germany and 
was among the earlier profound students of German thought 
(Herder and Niebuhr). He was essentially a mystic, as well as 
a Republican and a Protestant. His mystical tendencies were 
first revealed in the prose poem of Ahasverus (1833), a prolonged 
vision of the divine principle pervading the history of the race. 
Quinet's constant tendency was to confuse religious and secular 
history and to view the former as always dominant. His great 
work, La Revolution (1865), maintains that the French Revolu- 
tion failed because it was not animated by a religious principle 
and did not establish a new religion. Quinet's violent attacks on 
Catholicism, particularly on the Jesuits, had caused him to lose 
his chair at the College de France and after the Coup d'Etat of 
1851, he went into exile and wrote his Revolution. He is also 
to be credited with smaller historical studies on Roumania and 
Italy, with another formidable vision of the universe called 
La Creation and with a final philosophical testament, L'Esprit 
nouveau (1874). The last two works reveal the influence of 
English science, particularly of Darwin. Quinet's main idea was 
that of a divine unity — the Absolute — in every field, whether 
moral, social or scientific. He confused natural law with the 
spiritual world. He was less of a reasoner than a seer; he fore- 
told the Great War and the role of Germany therein. He was 
endowed with an exuberant imagination ; he was " God-intoxi- 

657 



658 MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS 

cated," like Spinoza; he was eloquent, romantic and versatile, 
even too versatile. " L 'immense M. Quinet," as Veuillot calls 
him, wrote " immense " prose-poems, but his intellect, though 
serious and lofty, was not vast enough for the task he assumed. 

More rational and convincing is the work of another historian, 
Count Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-59). Like Montesquieu, who 
greatly influenced his thought, Tocqueville came of 
a family connected with the magistracy and had a 
legal education. For a time he was judge at Versailles, then he 
was sent to the United States on an official mission. The result 
of his visit was the famous Democratie en Amerique (1835-39), 
the first thoroughgoing and impartial study of our institutions. 
After this success, Tocqueville embarked on a political career; 
he became a deputy and, for a brief interval, minister under 
Louis Napoleon. But he was not a practical politician and he 
retired after the Coup d'Etat. Failing health did not allow him 
to complete UAncien Regime et la Revolution, of which the first 
part was published in 1856. 

Tocqueville's two books derive from his vision of the necessity 
of democracies and his desire to check their less fortunate con- 
His Works sequences. As a liberal, an aristocrat and a his- 
torian of institutions, Tocqueville seems enlightened and im- 
partial in his approach to the democratic question. " Sa 
methode etait loyale et scrupuleuse comme son ame . ... II 
avait Fintuition du monde moderne " (Faguet) . Unlike his 
brother-historians, he is a cautious generalizer, has no set 
philosophy of history, and deals even too sparsely with con- 
siderations of climate, civilizations and race. Behind these 
forces he sees Democracy as a still greater force in itself; this 
he studies in its characteristics, its causes and its results. La 
Democratie en Amerique was also valuable and novel because 
it displaced the French Revolution as the main preoccupation 
of historians and showed how the rule of the people was effected 
in another country. American democracy was different, was 
more stable, more conservative and bourgeois than the first 
French Republic. But Tocqueville did not fail to point out 
the dangers of democracy, its leveling tendencies, its mass- 
despotism, the lowering treatment to which it subjects intellect 
and superiority. His work is a useful counterbalance against 
"the blaze and whirlwind of Rousseau" (Acton). 



POLITICS 659 

L'Ancien Regime is the suitable complement to the preceding 
volume; it shows, a generation before Taine, how the French 
passed from the monarchical to the democratic State. Again, 
Tocqueville's chief contention is a conservative one: that the 
Revolution did not overthrow everything, that on the contrary it 
kept and developed one of the notable features of the old regime ; 
to wit, administrative centralization. The Revolution further 
standardized and regularized government and ruled by a central 
control which Napoleon carried on. One of Tocqueville's for- 
ward-looking ideas is a federation of European democracies, 
along American lines. He would impose certain " checks " upon 
Republics and maintain an aristocratic infusion through the rep- 
resentative corps (cf. Montesquieu), the separation of adminis- 
trative and legislative functions and the independence of the 
judiciary. Tocqueville wrote in a clear well-ordered manner, 
though his pages are sometimes too thickly strewn with ob- 
servations and digressions; his type of mind was logical, lucid 
and conservative. 

The predominance of the historical genre throughout the 
century was forwarded by various governments and ministries. 
Growth of Under the bourgeois monarchy (Guizot and Thiers) , 
Historical historical study, considered as a " national institu- 
tion," was thoroughly reorganized. This movement 
was aided by the foundation of special schools and chairs, by the 
establishment of learned journals and of great collections. To 
this day, the section devoted to the " Histoire de France' " looms 
largest in the national libraries. Knowledge of medieval France 
was particularly encouraged by the Ecole des Chartes (revived 
in 1829) ; this school also developed the study of Old French and 
Celtic philology. Under Napoleon III, much historical research 
was accomplished through the favor of the Emperor and through 
the influence of Duruy's ministry (1863-69). The Ecole des 
Hautes Etudes, founded in 1868, has developed scholarly special- 
ization in many fields, and specialization is the mark of latter- 
day history. With the exception of Taine and of Renan, great 
names of assured literary standing are scarcely to be found, but 
there are several minor historians who deserve consideration. 

Fustel de Coulanges may almost be classed among the major 
prophets. He led the calm life (1830-89) of a scholar and 



660 MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS 

teacher. Influenced chiefly by Montesquieu and by Tocqueville, 
his works exhibit the importance of institutions and forms of 
Fustel de government as well as the continuity of national tra- 
Coulanges ditions. La Cite antique (1864) had an unusual 
success as a reconstitution of Roman life under the Republic 
and as an excellent study of the ancient city in general. Artist- 
ically and historically considered, the book is a masterpiece. 
In proportion, penetration and judgment, it leaves little to be de- 
sired. Precise and realistic in his style, Fustel gives life and 
substance to his theme. Yet much of his reconstruction is con- 
jectural, while his criticism of texts and sources is not sufficiently 
severe. The writer views religion as the main principle of fam- 
ily life and of the State. He rivals Michelet in his " tableaux 
d'ensemble " and in his emphasis on the soul of a nation. Fustel 's 
Histoire des Institutions politiques de Vancienne France (1875- 
92) gave him rank as a notable medievalist. He discounted the 
effect of the Frankish invasions and insisted on the continued 
power of Roman institutions. He studied the origins of feudal- 
ism, since he wished the new France to conserve the best of its 
past. In both books, Fustel writes in a sober scientific manner; 
he has a broad vision and a sure touch ; his influence on histori- 
cal research has been considerable. 

Henri Martin's useful and monumental Histoire de France 
(3rd ed., 19 vols., 1837-54), belongs to an earlier generation. 
Minor The work long held its own as a standard national 

Historians history. A good short history of France, still current 
in our own time, is that of Victor Duruy, whose role as Minister 
of Public Instruction has been mentioned. Duruy wrote several 
popular schoolbooks and was considered something of an author- 
ity on the Roman Empire (Histoire Romaine, 1843-74). Of 
another caliber is the imposing work of Albert Sorel (1842-1906) 
on U Europe et la Revolution frangaise (1885-1904) . Sorel shows 
how the Revolutionists became heirs to the foreign policy 
of the old regime; he recognizes the interplay of foreign opinion 
and domestic events; and he traces completely the course of 
the ensuing wars. Judicial, learned and a master of composition, 
Sorel has won a unique place among the historians of diplomacy. 
" His book," says Gooch, " is at once the first adequate study of 
the Revolution as an international event and the fairest judgment 



ETHICS 661 

of it as an episode in French history." Finally, Ernest Lavisse 
(b. 1842) has written the history of Prussia, but is best known 
through the Histoire de France (18 vols., 1900-1911) due to him 
and his collaborators. Written in accordance with present special- 
ists tendencies, this cooperative work has superseded the single- 
handed histories and is now considered the standard authority. 
Lavisse himself wrote for this History a masterly treatment 
of Louis XIV. 1 As professor and publicist, he has been active 
in remodeling the Sorbonne and in enforcing the ideal that the 
proper function of University men is to " creer la science " — 
that is, to increase and organize knowledge. 

French Catholicism was on the defensive until the end of the 
century and was usually associated with extreme reactionary 
Moralists: principles. Among the staunchest defenders of the 
Veuillot f ait h was Louis Veuillot (1813-83), a virulent 

journalist whose portrait appears in Augier's Fils de Giboyer. 
Veuillot's reputation as a writer has grown in recent years. He 
came of the people, received a scanty popular education and 
through a visit to Rome was converted at the age of twenty-five. 
He went in for Catholic journalism (L'Univers) , and for many 
years he spent himself in this profession. Upholding the Church 
against her various enemies, he was a bitter fighter and a satirist 
of contemporary life. He had wit, originality, unequal talent 
and poor taste. He became known for his short articles and 
melanges, of which the best-known have been collected in Les 
Libre-penseurs (1848), Les Parfums de Rome and Les Odeurs de 
Paris (1866), Veuillot's masterpiece. This volume preceeds from 
the thesis that while Rome is the spiritual head of the world, 
Paris is only its " tete charnelle " and a center of corruption. 
The city abounds in the morbid and mortuary odors of decom- 
position. Veuillot saw materialism as rampant in social life, in 
science and philosophy. So he attacks journalism, the drama, 
the salons, democracy and literature, whether Romantic or Real- 
istic. Though Classical in standards, he knew neither restraint 
nor good manners, and his style is violent, energetic and often 
coarse. He is by turns racy and amusing or sarcastic and in- 
tolerant. " He had a marvelous gift of righteous indignation 

1 Cf. also (preceding the above) the Histoire generate du IV e sieclea nos jours, ed, 
Lavisse and Rambaud, 1892-1899. 



662 MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS 

and vitriolic expression " (Guerard) . He also had undoubted 
sincerity and power. His function was to display his partial 
view of truth and to manifest his scorn for the Second Empire 
and the " persecutors " of the Church. He believed that human 
nature was thoroughly corrupt and, like De Maistre, he held 
sourly to the principle of dogmatic religious authority. 

A more artistic and agreeable writer was Eugene Fromentin 
(1820-76), painter, traveler and novelist. Fromentin lived his 
Fromentin books and one may almost say he painted them. 
His pictures of African countries, whether on canvas 
or on the printed page, are unsurpassed for colorful and exact 
detail (cf. Un Ete dans le Sahara). As a novelist, he shines 
rather in description than in composition or action. His best- 
known work is Dominique (1863) , which is a " roman d'analyse " 
of the personal sort, in the tradition of Adolphe. It is a psycho- 
logical study of the artistic temperament and of self-sacrifice. 
The hero falls in love with an old acquaintance but has the 
strength to renounce his love since she is now a married woman. 
In its idealism, the novel is reactionary, yet many Realistic 
devices are used in the technique of description and in the 
sensory approach to nature. But Fromentin had a pure and 
classical taste which led him back more and more to the " na- 
ture " of the ancients. This may be seen in his art-criticism, for 
instance, in Les Maitres d' autrefois (1876). 

During the last two decades of the century, on both sides of 
the Atlantic, the book known as " Amiel's Journal " had a con- 
siderable vogue. Its appearance coincided with the 
prevailing mood of religious doubt and self-an- 
alysis. 2 Henri-Frederic Amiel (1821-1881) was a disillusioned 
professor, an introspective thinker, a sensitive and conscientious 
spirit. He was a Genevan by birth and residence, but Euro- 
pean in his outlook. This Journal intime (1883-84) offers in 
many ways an epitome of the century's thought and feeling. It 
is a diary of the inner life, subtly explaining the writer's sterility 
and melancholy. It also evidences much penetration into phi- 
losophy and literature, and it contains many excellent critical 
judgments. Other moralists will be treated in connection with 
the reaction against Realism (see next chapter). 

2 Compare Matthew Arnold, Mrs. Ward's Robert Elsmere, etc. 



BOOK IX 
THE END OF THE CENTURY 

CHAPTER I 

IN FICTION: NATURALISM, PSYCHOLOGY 
AND OTHER CURRENTS 

The disaster of 1870-71 meant the dethronement of France 
as the first power in continental Europe. The war left a deep 
The Third mark upon many writers as well as upon the French 
Republic populace. The civil strife of the Commune aug- 
mented the feeling of uncertainty and depression. After making 
peace with Prussia, Thiers conducted his government from Ver- 
sailles and in the Spring of 71 sent troops against the Com- 
munists. There followed a brief and bitter civil war before a 
stable government was restored. Thiers, as the first President 
of the Third Republic, was supported by Gambetta, orator and 
statesman; and for some time the policy of - la revanche " against 
Germany was in vogue. This included the inauguration of uni- 
versal service and the maintenance of a large military organiza- 
tion. The French had promptly paid the war-indemnity of five 
billion francs. Under the Presidency of Marshal MacMahon 
(1873-79) the constitution of 1875 was promulgated. This 
divided the National Assembly into two governing bodies, the 
Chamber of Deputies and the Senate. MacMahon did not agree 
well with Jules Simon, his minister. Simon and Gambetta were 
the real powers in France, and the former began the dissensions 
with the Pope which continued for some time. Grevy was the 
next President (1879-87), whose chief minister, Jules Ferry, was 
marked for his anti-clericalism and his efforts in behalf of 
secular education. The colonial expansion of France in Indo- 
China (Tonkin), the protectorate of Tunis and the beginnings of 
the advance into Northern Africa date from 1881. A little later 
came the popular craze for General Boulanger. The " Boulan- 

G63 



664 FICTION: NATURALISM, PSYCHOLOGY 

giste " movement, which continued under the Presidency of Sadi 
Carnot (1887-1904), was finally arrested by the suicide of its 
leader. The movement was accompanied by much political 
acrimony, charges of corruption and the exaggerations of shrill 
partisan journalism — three of the worst features of the Third 
Republic. They were again manifest in the Panama scandal, 
which ended in the condemnation of De Lesseps, the chief 
engineer of the undertaking. A more peaceful attitude towards 
the Church having been adopted, the Republic was recognized 
by Leo XIII in 1892. The brief Presidency of Casimir-Perier 
was followed by that of Felix Faure (1895-1899), who, like his 
successor, M. Loubet, was a man of the people. In 1896, the 
Dual Alliance with Russia was officially announced. Under 
Faure and the Waldeck-Rousseau ministry occurred the famous 
Dreyfus affair. Captain Dreyfus was condemned to life-imprison- 
ment, in 1895, on charges of betraying military secrets to Ger- 
many. Many felt that Dreyfus, as a Jew, had been made a 
scapegoat, in order to avoid an army scandal. Disinterested ef- 
forts were made, notably by Emile Zola and Col. Picquart, to 
secure a new trial, and many " intellectuals," such as Anatole 
France, came to the defence of Dreyfus. His second trial (August, 
1899) resulted in a milder condemnation, attended by a specific 
pardon and a general amnesty. Nothing was ever proved against 
Dreyfus, but the case was used to forment every kind of political 
and racial passion. Under Loubet (1899-1906) , the Paris Exposi- 
tion of 1900 took place. In matters of education, M. Combes, as 
minister, accomplished the separation of Church and State. The 
clerical orders and powers, encouraging aristocratic education 
and royalist sympathies, had not helped the Republic. Combes 
broke up and expelled many religious associations, and the law 
of 1905 made the separation complete. From 1904-07 dates the 
formation of the Entente Cordiale with England, destined to have 
such important consequences; by the treaty of 1904 there was 
achieved an amicable division of spheres of influence in Egypt 
and Morocco. M. Fallieres was made President in 1906, and M. 
Poincare in 1913. At the turn of the century, France, in spite 
of her stationary birth-rate, was fairly prosperous. The con- 
dition of the working-classes had improved, while the intellectual 
life of the country had been forwarded by the establishment 



HUYSMANS 665 

of compulsory free education. In 1880-90 secular education 
came to emphasize the importance of modern subjects, and 
latterly more place has been given to the proper instruction of 
women. Young people have taken an increasing interest in 
athletics. Colonial expansion, especially in Africa and the 
Orient, revived a taste for adventure and was associated with 
the literature of exoticism (cf. Loti). The Expositions of 1889 
and 1900 showed that while France was participating in the 
results, good and evil, of modern industrialism, her products still 
kept a distinction of their own. This interest in articles de vertu 
is reflected in the fiction of Bourget. Connected with the in- 
dustrial situation was the growth of Socialism, which introduced 
another strong element into the confusion of political parties 
and the rapid changes of ministries in France. 

Let us now see what was happening in literature, particularly 
in fiction. 

The school of Zola, attacked by Brunetiere and others, had 
lost part of its dominion during the eighties. Five of the master's 
former adherents, including Paul Margueritte and 
" J.-H. Rosny," had on the appearance of La Terre 
(1887) signed a protest against Zolaism. The advent of the 
psychological novel, the passing of scientific positivism and the 
pressure of a more idealistic current (see below) did not favor 
Naturalism; about 1900 an " enquete " among a number of 
writers seemed to establish that the movement was dead. Yet 
there remains the heritage of Naturalism, particularly as regards 
the notation of fact and the careful descriptions of milieux. Thus 
the movement did not pass away with Zola but became blended 
with other movements, especially with the development of the 
symbolistic and the historical novel. 

For example, the sinister figure of Joris-Karl Huysmans (1848- 
1907) is regarded by some as the most advanced Naturalist, by 
„ others as an arch-symbolist and a decadent mystic. 

Huysmans, who came of Dutch ancestry, was a 
government employee, a slow but careful writer and a person of 
unattractive character. He passed through a gradual evolution 
from materialism to an aesthetic Catholicism which led him to 
make a retreat among the Trappists and finally to profess con- 



666 FICTION: NATURALISM, PSYCHOLOGY 

version. Beginning with a displeasing contribution to the Soirees 
de Medan and with a short grimy study of prostitution (Marthe, 
1876), Huysmans then became introspective and entered on his 
psychic pilgrimage with A Rebours (1884). The very title of 
this novel indicates a perversity which the hero, Des Esseintes, 
exemplifies in his search for rare sensations. He finds them in 
jewels, perfumes, music, weird paintings and medieval Latin 
literature. A Rebours applies the process of external Natural- 
ism to a morbid inner life. The book influenced Oscar Wilde 
and the hyperaesthetes. It well illustrates the restless neuras- 
thenia of its author, who goes a step further in La-bas (1891), a 
" disagreeable medley of modern and medieval nastiness " 
(Wells). The occult and the sacrilegious, particularly in the 
form of Satanism, here grip the ailing souls of Durtal and of his 
creator, Huysmans. En route (1895) shows a straighter pro- 
gression in its penitential tears and its desire for holiness. 
Finally, La Cathedrale and L'Oblat carry the writer, if not into 
true religion, at least towards contemplative peace and aesthetic 
bliss. Like others, Huysmans seems to have sought for faith 
as a final sensation. His treatment of these mingled themes is 
repellent, but his soul-states are apparently sincere and exhaus- 
tively studied ; he thus offers a typical case of decadence blended 
with Neo-Catholicism; and his literary talent, shown in a 
nervous impressionistic style with forceful epithet and metaphor, 
is very considerable. His novels are weak in composition, he can 
depict only himself, his taste is contaminated, but his power of 
picturesque description is almost faultless. 

Another student of Catholicism, though from a different stand- 
point, was Ferdinand Fabre (1827-98). Born and bred in the 
rude mountains of the Cevennes, trained as a youth 
for the priesthood, Fabre combines these antecedents 
in a succession of novels by turns autobiographical, clerical and 
rustic. As a Realistic delineator of peasantry and clergy, he is a 
disciple of Balzac, and his masterpiece, UAbbe Tigrane (1873), 
offers parallels with the Cure de Tours. Les Courbezon and M on 
Oncle Celestin are also notable novels. This writer studies the 
passions of the clergy, their benevolence, ambition and pride. 
But as a whole Fabre's methods are more blunt than artistic, and 
he never freed himself from a certain provincialism. The brutal 



OTHER NOVELISTS 667 

Naturalism of Octave Mirbeau likewise depicts the priesthood 
{L'Abbe Jules, etc.), as well as other subjects. 

There were several writers who began as imitators or comrades 
of Zola and who ended in quite a different manner. Paul Adam 
(1862-1920) accomplished an interesting evolution 
from a crude materialism {Chair molle) to a sort of 
symbolism which implied a new conception of the historical 
novel. This is called by M. Doumic the " roman collectif," since 
the effort is towards group-psychology, towards depicting the 
collective soul of an epoch, a crowd, a race. In the series called 
Le Temps et la Vie (1899 f.) Paul Adam vividly portrays the 
Napoleonic era, and less vividly that of the Restoration and 
Romanticism. The series consists of four novels: La Force, 
L' Enfant d'Austerlitz, La Ruse and Au Soldi de Juillet. It is in 
moments of national danger that the soul of a people is truly 
unified; consequently La Force is a fine and stirring novel, show- 
ing France as exalted first by self-defensive patriotism and then 
by the intoxication of Napoleonic glory. The cult of energy and 
of appetites is well-rendered. UEnfant d'Austerlitz, on the 
contrary, represents a period (the Restoration) of reaction and 
confusion, and the novel, which is too involved and compre- 
hensive, suffers from the defects of its subject. The Soldi de 
Juillet gives a massive handling of the Romantic era. The 
author excels in large frescoes, in descriptive sweep, rather than 
in psychological penetration or in artistic style. He combines 
features from Balzac and from Zola, and it is a curious tribute to 
the former master that Balzacian heroes — Rastignac or De 
Marsay — appear in the background of Adam's fiction as 
historical personages. 

It was natural that Paul Margueritte (1860-1918) and his 
brother Victor, sons of a distinguished general in the Franco- 
The Prussian war, should turn to that period for the 

Margueritte cycle of novels called Une Epoque (1898-1904) . This 
also includes four titles: Le Desastre, Les Trongons 
du Glaive, Les Braves Gens, La Commune. Like Adam, the 
Margueritte brothers found that the national soul is stronger in 
wartime than in reaction: Le Desastre lent itself to a more in- 
tensive portrayal than did the Prussian occupation {Les Trongons 
du Glaive) or La Commune. The first novel is evidently modeled 



668 FICTION: NATURALISM, PSYCHOLOGY 

on Zola's Debacle, and though Zola's gloomy depiction of war 
remains unrivaled, the morale of Le Desastre is of a healthier and 
more tonic quality. Indeed, this quality is characteristic of the 
best work of Paul Margueritte, who turned from the vulgar Natu- 
ralism of Pascal Gefosse (1887), through the psychological deli- 
cacy of La Tourmente (1893), to the collaborative cycle above- 
mentioned. Even here the influence of Zola is seen, in the impor- 
tance given to humble people and particularly in the treatment of 
crowds — the mob which is alternately childish, curious, crim- 
inal or heroic. The scenes of collective life in La Commune are 
very impressive. But as in other historical novels (cf. Flaubert 
and Adam) , the strictly fictional elements of incident and charac- 
ter are unduly minimized by the multitude of historical data. 
Further examples of the " roman collectif " in cycles will be 
treated in connection with Barres and Anatole France (see below) . 
Another pair of brothers, J. H. and S. J. Boex, signed with 
the joint pseudonym of " J.-H. Rosny." They may also be classed 
J.-H. among the " neo-realists," in that they approved 

Rosny ^he protests against Zola and stood, theoretically, 

for a broader and more idealistic view of humanity. Their work, 
however, is extremely eclectic and peculiar. It is Naturalistic 
in Nell Horn (1886) , a study of London low life and the Salvation 
Army ; it is prehistoric in such weird imaginings as Y amir eh and 
Les Xipehuz, in which we approach, conjecturally, not only the 
mammoths but the manners of the antediluvians ; it deals with the 
artistic temperament in Le Termite, and with sociology in the two 
important novels, Le Bilateral (1887) and Marc Fane (1888). 
These two studies emphasize the faith of " J.-H. Rosny " alike 
in science and in humanity as well as in the evolution of both 
forces towards a moral ideal. In praise of goodness, the brothers 
also wrote a trilogy — Daniel Valgraive (1891), L'Imperieuse 
Bonte and HIndomptee. Their message tends to forward an 
altruism which implies not self-sacrifice but true self-develop- 
ment. The work of " J.-H. Rosny " is better in moral and 
symbolistic intention than in artistic execution; action and drama 
are neglected, the characters are often pedantic, and the style is 
full of technical and obscure terms. Poetic and dithyrambic 
flights of style hardly atone for these deficiencies. Yet the 
Rosny brothers are important representatives of the " roman 
social," so conspicuous in our times. 



IDEALISM 669 

Most of the above writers represent either the symbolistic 
or the historical wing of Naturalism. In accordance with modern 
other complexity, the novel took on many other forms 

Varieties of during the past generation. It was by turns ideal- 
Fiction ^-^ psychological, impressionistic, as regards direc- 

tion ; as regards material, it was fashionable or idyllic, " region- 
alist " or exotic, military or ecclesiastical. Idealism as a method 
is either a Romantic survival or a reaction against too much 
Realism. It is mainly a survival in the work of Octave Feuillet 
(1821-90), who began as the inheritor of George Sand's rose- 
colored mantle. The too-celebrated Roman d'un Jeune homme 
pauvre (1858) exhibits this side of him; a more serious and 
Realistic vein is found in the tragic Julia de Trecoeur (1872) and 
in the grim passions of Monsieur de C amors. The title-hero of 
the latter story is Feuillet's best-drawn masculine character. 
Feuillet excelled in the portrayal of women's hearts and nerves. 
Idyllic idealism is the specialty of Andre Theuriet (1833-1907), 
who has written considerably of field and forest in the Eastern 
provinces of France. Theuriet and Francois Coppee (see Chap- 
ter III, below) have a rather bourgeois inspiration and a mildly 
agreeable talent, which is exercised chiefly in the short-story. 

Although the Realistic method, as a whole, had not yet spent 
its force, the last decades of the century were marked by a 
Idealistic partial reaction against Naturalism. The leaders 
Reaction m ^his reaction were such writers as Brunetiere, 
Bourget, Barres — "the three B's," all of whom became Catho- 
lics or Conservatives. The Swiss, Edouard Rod, and the aris- 
tocrat, Melchior de Vogue, may also be classed as sharing in 
this movement. Edouard Rod (1857-1910) passed his youth 
in Paris and there he attempted to write Naturalistic fiction ; but 
his true bent was rather towards psychological analysis and the 
literature of ideas. This " intuitivism " (subjective observation) 
was encouraged by Rod's appointment to a chair at the Uni- 
versity of Geneva. Among his important novels are: La Course 
a la mort (1885), which is introspective and pessimistic; Le Sens 
de la Vie (1899), which is moral and idealistic; La Vie privee 
de Michel Teissier and L' Ombre s'etend sur la montagne. A 
number of Rod's later novels are laid in Switzerland and have 
a thorough savor of the soil. A volume of criticism, Les Idees 



670 FICTION: NATURALISM, PSYCHOLOGY 

morales du temps present (1891), furnishes an excellent survey 
of the period and its chief writers. The Vicomte Melchior de 
Vogue (1850-1910), called " the Chateaubriand of the Third 
Republic," was a traditionalist in taste, religion and politics. 
The work of Zola and his group could not please such a man; 
and Vogue wrote Le Roman russe (1886) partly to forward the 
" bankruptcy " of French Naturalism, partly to exhibit the 
virtues of Russian fiction, from Pushkin to Tolstoy. Like 
Brunetiere (see Ch. IV, below), Vogue held that the Russian 
novelists had a better morality and more humanity than the 
French. He was unusually well qualified, by long residence 
and intimate association, to speak for the Russian novel, and 
his book is at once a psychological study and a critical rev- 
elation. It is also exceedingly well written. Among Vogue's 
own novels, the most notable is Les Morts qui parlent (1899). 
There is a certain kinship between the idealistic and the 
psychological novel, also called the roman d' analyse. This kind, 
from the Princesse de Cleves through Dominique, 
is clearly in the French tradition. It is not surpris- 
ing, then, that in the early eighties the public should turn from 
the externalities of Realism to the work of a man whose prime 
concern was with what he called " soul-states." Paul Bourget 
(b. 1852) has accomplished the evolution described by Descartes 
from a bookish education to the " grand livre du monde," thence 
to varied travels and finally to the world of inner contemplation. 
He speaks of his many volumes as " les etapes d'une conscience 
toujours en marche." Beginning with poetry and criticism 
(see Ch. IV, below), Bourget soon won a reputation as a society 
novelist: the success inaugurated by Cruelle enigme 1 (1885) 
was continued in the next few years by Un crime oV amour and 
Andre Cornelis, by Mensonges and Un coeur de femme. These 
half-dozen novels express the earlier Bourget, who combines a 
taste for high life — clubmen, salons, elegance, bibelots — with 
a delicate analytical art. Primarily a psychologist and moralist, 
he chooses the upper strata of society in order best to study the 
more leisurely developments of modern love. His charming 
women — Therese de Sauve or Suzanne Moraines — are of a 

1 L'Irreparable (1883) first revived the psychological novel, but was not so 
successful. 



BOURGET 671 

romantic type, sentimental or sensual, complicated descendants 
of Emma Bovary. The men subjected to this feminine influence 
are either weak youths, like Andre Cornelis, or worldly and 
corrupt roues. Bourget himself is not romantic in his treatment 
of passion, whose consequences he usually deplores; but the 
atmosphere of these stories is insidiously relaxing and the 
author's sensibility is " maladive et souffrante." 

A change came over his spirit with the publication of Le 
Disciple, in 1889. Bourget mentally resembles Taine, to whom 
His Second he owed much in his conception of the multiple ego 
Stage anc [ m hj s dissection of emotion and passion. Le 

Disciple tells the story of a youth who likewise fell under the in- 
fluence of a great deterministic psychologist, whose principles 
he applied disastrously in his emotional life. The novel created 
a storm among the critics and had a pronounced effect upon 
French youth; it displays all of Bourget's qualities, but it is 
written in a sterner tone and has more of a moral glow than 
heretofore. The author, however, was not yet through with 
dilettanteism and cosmopolitanism — two dangers against which 
he frequently warned others. As for cosmopolitanism, there 
followed the artistically fruitful journeys to Italy and England 
(Sensations d'ltalie, 1891). Such novels as Cosmopolis (1893) 
and Une Idylle tragique (1896) deal with the " floating Laputa," 
the super- city of w T orld- citizens w r ho take no stable root any- 
where. As for dilettanteism, Bourget, with a finger on his own 
pulse, thus defines the disease: 

C'est une disposition de l'esprit, tres intelligente a la fois et 
tres voluptueuse, qui nous incline tour a tour vers les formes 
diverses de la vie et nous conduit a nous preter a toutes sans 
nous donner a aucune. 

After the Dreyfus affair, Bourget swung into line with the tra- 
ditionalists, political and religious. In UEtape (1902), he urges 
a slower social development of the family, which should not 
hasten through its stages in the American manner. A growing 
sympathy with Catholicism is found in Un Divorce (1904) and 
in Le Demon de Midi (1915) . Bourget has also written numerous 
volumes of nouvelles {Un Saint, Le Luxe des autres, etc.). In 
spite of a heavy style, all of this fiction shows a genuine 



672 FICTION: NATURALISM, PSYCHOLOGY 

capacity for the imaginative embodiment of abstract ideas 
and a gift for the minute dissection of modern types. More- 
over, Bourget's construction is fundamentally excellent, and 
the average reader feels impatient when a good plot is ham- 
pered by long-drawn-out descriptions and analyses, often unes- 
sential to the story. Yet it is in these analyses that the author's 
peculiar power resides; he ranks as a moralistic philosopher 
who " adds another chapter to the science of the soul." 

Bourget brought psychology into fashion and influenced the 
work of Edouard Rod (see above) ; of Marcel Prevost, the popular 
novelist (UAutomne oVune jemme, Les Demi-vierges, 
etc.) ; and of Maurice Barres, during his first period. 
The last-named has by his intense patriotism doubled his fame 
within recent years. He was born (1862) in the Vosges mountains 
and brought up in Lorraine while that province was undergoing 
its painful Germanization. The strife of the two races made a 
strong impression on the sensibility of young Barres; but first he 
turned to another field of literary expression, namely, the " Cult 
of the Ego." The trilogy published under this general title 
includes Sous I'ceil des barbares (1888), which describes a young 
man's struggle for self-assertion against the Philistines; Un 
homme libre (1889) also develops a theory of egotistical gym- 
nastics; and Le Jardin de Berenice (1891), less obscurely written, 
repeats a similar theme, with somewhat more regard for the 
outer world. At this stage Barres believed that humanity could 
become a " beautiful forest " only through the intensive cultiva- 
tion of each individual tree; therefore let us keep our egos in 
a state of ardent and extreme exaltation. Dilettanteism and 
affection are conspicuous in these works, which owe most to 
the influence of Renan. Against this master Barres presently 
turned violently, became an apostle of action and wrote another 
trilogy or cycle called Le Roman de Verier gie nationale. The 
first in the series, Les Deracines (1897) , urges that it is dangerous 
to uproot men from their province (Lorraine) . L'Appel au soldat 
(1900) stands for military patriotism. As early as 1889, Barres 
had been elected deputy to the Chamber, whose members he now 
satirizes in Leurs figures (1902). Finally, such works as Au 
service de VAllemagne and Colette Baudoche (1909) plead for 
the defense of the "Eastern bastions" (like Metz), because 



LOTI 673 

France is the chief representative of modern civilization. The 
development of the author has thus been from egotism, through 
" regionalism," to nationalism and ultimately to a view of civil- 
ization as a whole. Whether in Lorraine or Paris, for the race 
or for the nation, he has become a stalwart traditionalist, a 
leader in the " Ligue des patriotes." From complexity and ob- 
scurity he has developed a passion for simplicity, whether in 
character, plot or ideas (cf. Colette Baudoche). Without de- 
preciating the value of his service or of his message, it should 
be said that many people find the literary temperament of M. 
Barres perverse, dogmatic, unduly critical and overbearing. But 
his style has marked qualities of subtlety or eloquence; he has 
a gift for description and much ironic power. 

M. Julien Viaud (b. 1850) took the pseudonym of " Pierre 
Loti " and has served most of his life as an officer of the French 
navy. Born at Rochefort on the Charente, of Hugue- 
not ancestry (cf. Le Roman oVun enfant, 1890), he 
passed an unhappy sensitive childhood, and at the age of seven- 
teen embarked on the series of voyages which made his fame. 
Loti offers the most complete modern example of literary 
exoticism; his talent is essentially subjective and impressionistic; 
his power of describing foreign lands, their scenery and total 
effect, is very remarkable. We may see his gift expand from 
Oceania to Iceland and from China almost to Peru. First came 
the anonymous Aziyade (1879), followed by Rarahu (1880), 
otherwise known as Le Manage de Loti, which started his vogue. 
These two novels were laid respectively in Turkey and in Tahiti, 
while in " l'etonnant et brulant" Roman d'un Spahi (1881), 
Loti passes on to Senegambia. He first treats of Brittany and 
the surrounding seas in Mon frere Yves (1883). These earlier 
novels recount mainly his personal adventures under various 
disguises; they are rilled with sensuous glamour and with 
primitive sweethearts, " femmes de reve, creatures a peine 
ebauchees." 

With Pecheur d'Islande (1886), Loti returns to Brittany and 
gives us his most profoundly human book as well as a compen- 
dium of his various gifts. Greater and more impersonal emotions 
find expression in this idyll of the betrothal and parting of two 
Breton lovers, the fisherman Yann and " la grave et tendre Gaud." 



674 FICTION: NATURALISM, PSYCHOLOGY 

The fisherman never returns from his voyage to Iceland, and 
the last part of the book describes the waiting and the mourning 
of the women left behind. Two of Loti's chief obsessions, the 
changeable devouring sea and the all-pervasive thought of death, 
are rendered with power and melancholy. Madame Chrysan- 
theme (1887) deals with Japan and again with exotic love. Later 
stories, such as Matelot and Fantome d' Orient, show a partial 
repetition of old themes. There is also he Livre de la pitie et de 
la mort (1891), a significant title, under which most of this 
author's works might be assembled. With few exceptions, they 
are not really novels; they constitute rather a succession of 
pictures and of moods within the experience of the writer. For 
example, a trip to Palestine was recorded in La Galilee (1895) 
and was connected with Loti's unsuccessful endeavor to revive 
his youthful faith; yet there is religious feeling in Ramuntcho 
(1897) , the story of two Basque lovers separated by their different 
creeds. Near this beautiful Basque country, where the Pyrenees 
slope to the sea, Loti has established himself in his declining 
years. Of his later writings, Les Desenchantees (1908), con- 
cerning the advance of feminism in Turkey, has been the most 
notable. 

Like Chateaubriand, Loti possesses a great and melancholy 
charm. Like the elder enchanter, the fin de siecle wanderer makes 
us participate in the sense of fleeting joys, of ruins, of inevitable 
death and endings, the lure and failure of exotic love. Like 
Rene, Loti's civilized heroes cannot long abide with the simple 
savage maidens. With a remnant of religious feeling, Loti also 
wrote an " Itinerary " from Paris to Jerusalem. He is Romantic 
in his acute sensibility, his absorption in nature and his absorp- 
tion of nature into himself. His style, with all its simplicity, 
has the penetrating and suggestive power of music. He is modern 
chiefly by virtue of his impressionism, in description and sensa- 
tion, and by the wide range of his latter-day exoticism. Emo- 
tional rather than thoughtful, not elaborate in characterization 
or plot, his fiction moves us by his capacity for sincerely realiz- 
ing alien landscapes and alien souls. 

Jacques-Anatole Thibault (b. 1844) , known to the world as 
Anatole France, is the foremost living French writer. For half 
a century his piercing mind and fascinating style have reflected 



ANATOLE FRANCE 675 

the chief movements of his age. Reared in the Latin quarter, 
his imaginative boyhood turned naturally to books and dreams. 
Anatole He was educated at the ecclesiastical College 

France Stanislas; later he knew Greek beauty and 

became associated with the Parnassians. Strongly Pagan are 
the Poemes dores (1873) and the Parnassian drama of Les Noces 
Corinthiennes. France then passed through the usual stages of 
devotion to science and dabbling in Realism; but he soon re- 
turned to the more characteristic dreaming and beauty-loving 
which reappear in Le Crime de Sylvestre Bonnard (1881). This 
masterpiece recounts delightfully the self-sacrifice of an old 
scholar, who protects the granddaughter of his former sweet- 
heart. In the charming Livre de mon ami (1885), the author 
definitely renounces science in behalf of imagination and the 
pensive fancies of his youth. 

Anatole France is an intellectual Epicurean, particularly so 
in his first period (until 1897). This tendency exists in the 
The works mentioned above and increases through his 

Epicurean revival of fairy tales (L'Abeille) , of the legendary 
past (Baltasar) and of the historical clash between Christianity 
and Paganism in Thais (1890). The beauty -lover is also a 
scholarly dilettante, and Renan influences him during these years. 
Thais, so rich in background and in philosophical reflection, 
likewise owes something to Flaubert's Tentation de Saint Antoine. 
Dilettanteism is prominent in France's literary criticism, which 
occupied him (see Ch. IV, below) from 1885-92. He returns 
to tales and legends in UEtui de nacre (1892), where we find 
one of his most striking short stories, Le Procurateur de Judee. 
Half of this volume deals with the eighteenth century, which 
from a double standpoint (see above, p. 372) was peculiarly 
fitted to attract Anatole France. Irony and skepticism are more 
conspicuous and Voltaire becomes permanently his master in La 
Rotisserie de la Peine Pedauque with its companion-volume, Les 
Opinions de M. Jerome Coignard (both of 1893) . The former, 
resembling Candide, is an agreeably rambling tale of alchemy, 
gallantry, anti- clericalism and a genial eighteenth-century abbe. 
Two studies of Italy show still another side of A. France: in Le 
Lys rouge (1894), he wrote almost his first modern novel; the 
Florentine background is beautifully described, and it is evident 



676 FICTION: NATURALISM, PSYCHOLOGY 

that the author approves the stark passion of the lovers depicted 
therein. The sensual foundations for his dilettanteism are re- 
vealed again in Le Puits de Sainte-Claire, in which are related 
more or less churchly legends of the Italian Renaissance. In 
Le Jar din d'Epicwre (1894), considered by many his most 
thoughtful book, France gives us the flower of his epicurean 
meditations up to date. Currents of pessimism and mordant 
irony are discernible, but the author stoutly maintains his thesis 
that wisdom lies in the search for intellectual and sensual 
pleasures. 

Nothing very radical had yet been heard from Anatole France ; 
he was even elected to the Academy through the efforts of con- 
Satirist and servatives in 1896. But a new Anatole arises from 
Radical ^he p a g es f the Histoire contemporaine and from his 

participation in the Dreyfus affair. In the latter he came out 
strongly for Dreyfus; in the former he satirized the tradi- 
tionalists who opposed that cause ; in both, people were surprised 
to see the scholar and the dweller in the past descend to the 
strife of the market-place. The Histoire contemporaine is an- 
other modern cycle (see p. 668), including L'Orme du mail 
and Le Mannequin d'osier (both of 1897), UAnneau d'amethyste 
(1899) and Af. Bergeret d Paris (1901). The last two of these 
works are particularly concerned with the Dreyfus affair, but 
they all deal with intrigue, political or amorous, provincial and 
Parisian; the thin plot revolves around the infidelity of Mme 
Bergeret or the promotion of a priest; clerics, royalists, militarists 
and society women are bitterly satirized; there are recurring 
characters among whom Professor Bergeret is the most notable; 
he is the mouthpiece for Anatole France, and these mouthpieces 
(cf. Bonnard and Coignard) are always important for the quality 
of their thought and style. That the " Affair " practically con- 
verted our author to socialism is apparent from a number of 
orations and special pleas (collected in Vers les temps meilleurs, 
1906). But in literature proper this conversion is less visible. 
Apart from minor works, his remaining years have been spent 
in composing imaginative interpretations of history, treated either 
as fiction or as biography. To the latter class belongs the Vie 
de Jeanne d'Arc (1908, but begun twenty years before) . Written 
in the manner of Renan, beautifully unified in tone, this is a 



ANATOLE FRANCE 677 

reconstruction, half-sympathetic, half-skeptical, of the heroine's 
environment and personality. Not thoroughly accurate histori- 
cally, the work explains the atmosphere and birth of a legend. 
Vile des Pingouins (1908) is a satirical allegory, a sketch of 
humanity's development; it is at times as coarse as Rabelais and 
as bitter as Swift; often obscure in its references, the book yet 
contains many flashes of genius. Les Dieux out soif (1912), 
displaying the excesses of the Terror, seems a paradoxical per- 
formance on the part of a believer in the Revolution; several 
of the characters are strongly etched, and private history is well 
interwoven with that of the nation. La Revolte des anges 
(1914) is anti-Christian, and Sur la voie glorieuse (1915) is 
anti-German. 

The message of Anatole France is too complex to be clear. 
We doubt whether the dilettante has wholly given way to the 
reformer; he is still too fond of contradiction and too readily 
disillusioned. Retaining his sympathy for the proletariat, he 
" passed the sponge of universal raillery " over Church and 
State. He who loved legends, historical or religious, for their 
romantic savor, has also mocked at them for their lack of truth. 
He who decorated the shrine of love has become preoccupied with 
its biological function. Only two things has he left standing: 
his own intellect and his artistic competence. These two gifts, 
in the form of esprit and devotion to beauty, are interwoven with 
his incomparable personal style. 2 The esprit appears as compact 
wit, as delicate or bitter irony, and as the humor that arises 
from a paradoxical situation. When the female Penguin is 
seized and inducted into her first garment, she inquires: " Tombe- 
t-elle bien?" When M. Bergeret grows philosophical, he never 
addresses his wife but makes brilliant observations to his dog. 
Paradox is involved in the humor of Crmnquebille, in the comedy 
of Celui qui epousa une jemme muette, and in the situation of 
La Revolte des anges, where the angels become men of the world 
and the devils become angels. Every situation is enhanced by 
the esprit so characteristic of this author. As for his beauty-wor- 
ship, that is the trait with which we began and with which we 
must end. It is in honor of beauty that he finds his most perfect 
phrases and that he cherishes the fairest images: the image of 

8 Which he defined as a compound of "infinite shades of thought." 



678 FICTION: NATURALISM, PSYCHOLOGY 

Dido wandering in the myrtles with her immortal wound fine 
image of Thais, actress and courtesan — 

Immobile, semblable a une statue, mais promenant autour 
d'elle le paisible regard de ses yeux de violette, douce et fiere, elle 
donnait a tous le frisson tragique de la beaute. 

This ideal beauty lives again in Le Jardin d'Epicure and haunts 
the dreams of Bergeret. It is found in superb Pagan flights of 
fancy, like the vision of Nectaire (Pan) in La Revolte des anges. 
It quickens many exquisite descriptions of nature, whether in the 
French provinces, in Italy or in the Orient. It is crystallized 
in short perfect sentences: " Et sur son beau rire un faune presse 
une grappe de raisin vermeiL , ' It is the most sincere and the most 
enduring quality of Anatole France, who in matters of thought 
is a myriad-minded and skeptical Voltairian, but in matters of 
art remains a faithful Epicurean. 



CHAPTER II 

IN DRAMA: THE THREE MOVEMENTS 

The three chief dramatic currents towards the end of the 
century are Naturalistic, psychological and Romantic. But first 
we should reckon with the destinies of la piece bien 
faite, which descended from Scribe to Sardou. The 
well-made play may be defined as a product of artifice rather 
than art, dependent on incident and formulas rather than on char- 
acter-study and truth to life. Victorien Sardou (1831-1908), 
essentially a theatrical expert, used formulas in the manner of 
Victor Hugo, stage-tricks in the manner of Mr. Belasco, and 
stage-setting in an original elaborate manner which has since 
nearly overpowered the modern theater. Sardou wrote about 
sixty plays, covering an extremely wide range. Some of his 
His Two dramas are serious, but he shines particularly in light 
Specialties comedy and in the big historical " machine." He 
began by amusing the Second Empire, whose luxury he loved, 
with such airy trifles as Pattes de mouche (1860) and Nos bons 
Villageois (1866) . His masterpiece in vaudeville is the sparkling 
Divorgons (1880), which extracts merriment from the possibili- 
ties of impending divorce laws (see p. 598). These comedies 
are marked by fertility of invention and by skill in maintaining 
the interest of the audience. Sardou is at any rate less super- 
ficial than Scribe, and a more serious kind of domestic comedy, 
as exemplified in Fernande, is within his scope. Also, Rabagas 
(1872), usually considered his greatest play, exhibits the political 
demagogue (probably Gambetta) with humor, power and a large 
background. In the seventies, the versatile writer began the 
series of semi-historical melodramas with which his name is 
most frequently associated. The outstanding ones are Patrie 
(1869), La Haine (1874), and the three " Doras," {Dora, Fedora, 
and Theodora) of which Fedora (1882) saw the triumphal advent 
of Sarah Bernhardt and Theodora (1884) marks the introduction 

679 



680 IN DRAMA: THE THREE MOVEMENTS 

of elaborate stage-settings and costumes. In this new departure 
Sir Henry Irving followed Sardou. The story of La Tosca (1887) 
and, in lighter vein, that of Madame Sans-Gene (1893), are 
well known; in the latter play, Rejane gave a great characteriza- 
tion of Napoleon's reckless washerwoman. Sardou continued to 
use historical dramas, dealing with the France of the Revolution, 
the Italy of Dante and the Spain of the Inquisition {La Sorciere, 
1903). These plays are full of sensational and spectacular 
effects and show much cleverness in construction; but within 
they are rather hollow. The dramatist sometimes mingled his 
two specialties of vaudeville and melo, as in La Famille Benoiton 
(1865) . He is a skilled tactician of the stage, a " master-builder 
of attractive edifices that are not enduring." 

A gentlemanly playwright, Edouard Pailleron (1834-99), also 
began activities under the Second Empire; but his most notable 
_ ... dramas were produced later. In his graceful well- 

written comedies, Pailleron depicts the upper social 
strata with worldly knowledge and a light touch. As regards 
structure and devices, Pailleron's plots are " well-made/' but he 
has more elegance than Scribe and seems rather in the literary 
tradition of Beaumarchais and Musset. UEtincelle (1879) 
shows how the " spark " of love may be kindled in a woman's 
heart. La Souris (1887) stages a ladies' battle for a lover — an 
amiable middle-aged Don Juan who succumbs to the charm of 
the ingenue. Le Monde oil Von s'ennuie (1881) delicately derides 
a coterie of blue-stockings and agreeably demonstrates how love 
may be superior to learning. This is Pailleron's most famous 
play and is often considered the best light comedy of the century. 
It recalls Moliere's Femmes Savantes. 



1. Naturalism and the Social Drama. 

Naturalistic drama is closely connected with the so-called 
theatre social, which like the roman social aims at the portrayal 
The of sociological problems and conditions in all their 

"Theatre diversity. Balzac, Augier and Dumas fils had 
pointed the way ; the road was clear, in the last dec- 
ades of the century, for a succession of plays which should deal 
with love in its social aspects (the family, adultery, divorce) ; 



THE THEATRE-LIBRE 681 

with the confusion of castes and with such groups as the magis- 
tracy, doctors and writers, politicians, teachers, business men; 
with such problems as heredity, the social evil, race-suicide and 
political corruption. Dozens of people wrote plays along these 
lines, for this is the most important type of modern drama; 
Eugene Brieux is its chief representative. But neither Brieux 
nor Becque could have obtained full recognition save for the 
exertions of M. Antoine, who as producer and stage- 
manager founded the Theatre-Libre (1887-96) and 
later the Theatre- Antoine (1897-1906). The effort of the 
Theatre-Libre was four-fold: (1) The suppression of the well- 
made play; (2) realistic stage-settings, naturalness in elocution 
and pantomime; (3) attacks on the " commercial " theater, the 
emphasis on a good ensemble rather than " stars," and the 
endeavor to present new playwrights not favored by the sub- 
ventioned theaters; (4) hence the launching of novelties and of 
such foreign writers as Ibsen, Hauptmann and Tolstoy. In 
1890-95 most of Ibsen was presented at Paris (Theatre-Libre, 
Theatre de l'CEuvre, etc.) and his influence, whether in the 
direction of Realism or of Symbolism, was considerable. Other 
Scandinavians, Russians and Germans counted in similar direc- 
tions. As a Naturalistic movement, the Theatre-Libre over-em- 
phasized pathology and crime, grossness and pessimism. It 
preferred sordidness to Sardou. It produced dramas ranging from 
poetic symbolism to the piece rosse or " tough " play (Becque and 
Oscar Metenier) . It staged a good deal of Zola's fiction and that 
of the Goncourts. It was illumined by various lesser lights 
(Ceard, Hennique, Rosny, J. Jullien). And it discovered the 
majority of contemporary dramatists, including Lavedan, Porto- 
Riche, Curel and Brieux. The regular stage presently claimed 
most of Antoine's neophytes. 

Eugene Brieux (b. 1858) is a man of the people, acquainted 
with the seamy side of life and a journalist of experience. A 
" robust paladin," he evinces a complete sincerity, 
a good sense of fact, a wide and fair handling of 
social questions. He is the godson of Dumas fils, in his blending 
of reformatory intentions with dramatic technique, to which 
he sometimes adds the strong " sliced " scenes of Becque. Critics 
usually make three divisions in the work of Brieux: 



682 IN DRAMA: THE THREE MOVEMENTS 

I. From Menages d'artistes (1890) through UEvasion (1896), 
a group containing mostly comedy and satire. La Couvee is 
concerned with the training of children, UEngrenage with po- 
litical corruption, and Les Bienfaiteurs is unfavorable to organ- 
ized charity. Blanchette (1892) made Brieux' reputation {via 
Antoine) and is the best play of this period. It presents strong 
characters and well-knit scenes. The problem revolves around 
a heroine who has been too well educated for her destiny. The 
daughter of a village inn-keeper (le Pere Rousset), Blanchette 
has obtained her teaching diploma, but cannot find a position. 
She remains at home, waiting, and the conflict of the village 
milieu with her ambitions is excellently set forth. She quarrels 
with Pere Rousset, who sends her forth to her disaster; unable 
to find suitable work, she descends to the depths in one version 
of the play, but a more moderate " happy ending " installs her, 
after many tribulations, as the wife of an inferior. The fault 
of the situation is attributed to the State, which should provide 
for its trained educators. 

II. The second division runs from Les Trois filles de M. Du- 
pont (1897) through Maternite (1903). Brieux here waxes mili- 
tant and more pessimistic, while his dramas become definite 
studies of various environments and professions (cf. Balzac). 
For example, Resultat des courses is a good presentation of 
lower-class gambling, Les Remplagantes shows the perils of 
nurses, Maternite is a defence of motherhood. In several of these 
plays, as in the too-famous A varies, it is evident that discussion 
and reform are occupying Brieux more than straight dramatics. 
Les Trois filles de M. Dupont is better, in its presentation of 
" chained " women and their limited destinies. But Brieux' 
masterpiece is La Robe rouge (1900), whose title is indicative 
of the legal profession. Many varieties of judicial rank and 
character are here developed. The author depicts the magis- 
tracy as over-crowded, poorly paid and open to political 
manipulations. The plot is truly dramatic: a murder has 
been committed, and since a culprit must be found (for the 
benefit of the examining magistrate) a false accusation weighs 
against a peasant, whose wife is put through the " third degree." 
These inquisitional scenes are common and extremely forceful 
in Brieux. The peasant's wife, Yanetta, is compelled to ac- 



BRIEUX 683 

knowledge a former indiscretion, and the husband, though 
cleared of the charge of murder, loses his domestic happiness 
and condemns Yanetta. She obtains poetic justice by killing 
Mouzon, the instigator of the charge and the villain of the 
plot. Around this central action, other destinies, especially 
those of the Vagret family, are developed within the main 
theme of the hard condition of the magistracy. The play, 
then, happily combines dramatic interest with the study of a 
particular class. 

III. Beginning approximately with La Deserteuse (1904) and 
not yet ended, Brieux' third period is difficult to characterize. 
The problem too often overrides the play in this last division; 
yet a calmer and more optimistic note is heard and somewhat 
wider social questions are treated. La Frangaise (1907) sup- 
ports by discussion rather than by drama the thesis that the 
French woman is better behaved than is usually supposed by for- 
eigners. Simone is interesting technically, as also in its centering 
of family solidarity around the child; 1 the same moral is found 
in Suzette and La Deserteuse. La Femme seule (1913) is good 
drama and equally good feminism. The heroine tries to gain her 
own bread and is several times defeated by the rivalry or the 
gallantry of man (cf. Blanchette) . Le Bourgeois aux champs 
(1914) is an amusing variation on Flaubert's Bouvard et 
Pecuchet; the townsman comes to grief on his farm and the clash 
of classes is well portrayed. 

Brieux' conscientious sincerity, his moral intentions and the 
comprehensiveness of his social survey are all to his credit. He 
is broad-minded and earnest, yet with sufficient humor and un- 
derstanding of human complexities. It is less certain that he 
makes the most of his dramatic opportunities. Too often he 
yields to the impulse to talk or to preach; thus the action lags, 
and the characters fall heavily into the roles of puppets or mouth- 
pieces. His language is sometimes rough or ungrammatical, but 
remains as democratic as his subjects and his sympathies. The 
atmosphere of ugliness or depression which marks certain plays 
is inherent in the Naturalistic drama. It is still more conspic- 
uous in the brutal though intense work of Octave Mirbeau (1848- 

1 This may be considered Brieux' chief "message," since no less than eight plays 
emphasize the importance of the child. 



684 IN DRAMA: THE THREE MOVEMENTS 

1917), novelist and dramatist, who wrote Les mauvais Bergers 
(presenting workmen on a strike) and notably Les Affaires sont 
les affaires (1903). This play is in the straight tradition of the 
money-drama from Tur caret to Becque. In Isidore Lechat, Mir- 
beau fully depicts that peculiarly nineteenth-century type of the 
predatory millionaire whom Balzac created and whom Dumas 
fils developed (La Question d? argent). This type has become 
worse morally and the presentation is more acrid in Mirbeau. 
The characters and the financial intrigues are life-like, so that 
the play is a masterpiece of grim power. With the exception of 
Mirbeau, undiluted Naturalism was on the decline before the 
end of the century; the early proteges of Antoine have mostly 
scattered in other directions, though the technical innovations of 
the Theatre-Libre are not forgotten. 

2. Psychology and the " Triangle" 

The second movement in the contemporary drama may be 
considered as including whatever emphasizes the analysis of 
. character and the psychology of love. The most 

distinguished of these psychological dramatists was 
Paul Hervieu (1857-1915) ; he was also foremost in the domain 
of high tragedy. He is an artist in sentiment and expression, 
a rigorous logician in technique, and better than any other mod- 
ern he recalls the tragic elevation of Racine. These qualities 
became evident in Les Tenailles (1895), which worthily opened 
the series of his problem-plays. The title (" The Pincers," cf . 
Le Dedale or " The Labyrinth ") indicates a predicament, and 
Hervieu is fond of showing characters in the clutch of circum- 
stance or individuals conflicting with the law. In this tense 
tragedy, the " pincers " of matrimony are applied by a hard hus- 
band to grip his wife, when she wishes to divorce him and remarry; 
they are applied by the wife to grip the husband when, ten years 
later, she forces him to sustain the burden of herself and of her 
child by a former lover. In each case, the too moderate divorce 
laws, as Hervieu considers them, operate not for freedom but 
to compel the bearing of the yoke. He and Brieux differ widely 
in their views on divorce. 

The dramatic swing of the pendulum and the injustice of the 



HERVIEU 685 

code are again features of La Loi de I'homme (1897), in which 
Hervieu shows himself a convinced feminist. As a dramatist, he 
displays too much esprit de geometrie, and UEnigme 
(1901) has almost the rigor of a mathematical 
puzzle. This tendency is less apparent in La Course du flambeau 
(1901), probably Hervieu's finest play; the main characters are 
profoundly depicted, the struggles of maternal love are universal- 
ized in the high Classic manner, and there is dramatic economy 
or exact measuring of the means to the end. The title suggests 
the theme: that the torch of love goes down the ages, just as the 
doom of sacrifice descends through the generations. Of the three 
women concerned, the grandmother is devoted to her daughter, 
Sabine Revel, who in turn gives up everything for her own 
daughter: an opportunity for remarriage, her honesty in a money 
transaction, her mother and finally the daughter herself. It is a 
poignant, cumulative drama. In Le Dedale (1903), Hervieu 
returns to the triangle and to the difficult situation of French 
women in the matter of divorce. A woman, divorcee for ade- 
quate reasons, remarries and is then attracted back to her former 
husband (cf. Le Berceau by Brieux). The child appears again 
as a great influence and ultimately as the solution of the heroine's 
entanglement; as for the men, they end by killing each other and 
disappearing over a cliff — a denouement which has been much 
criticized. Of Hervieu's subsequent plays, Le Reveil (1905) and 
Connais-toi (1909) offer the most psychological interest; they 
both deal with the subconscious or with the dormant depths 
of character revealed under stress. Hervieu's logical rigor finally 
yielded place to a more philosophic charity and a mellower dra- 
matic touch. His style becomes progressively clearer, though still 
at times over-literary; but his best pages maintain a Classic 
elegance, precision and harmony. His principal idea is that the 
law is often unjust to individuals, particularly to women. Hervieu 
is a convinced feminist and seems to commiserate the plight 
of his tempest-driven heroines. Like the other amorists, he is 
mainly concerned with the eternal "triangle" and with its 
possible geometrical variations. But his treatment is refined and 
skilful. 

Georges de Porto-Riche (b. 1849) is also an analyst of love and 
like Hervieu is more interested in the development of individual 



686 IN DRAMA: THE THREE MOVEMENTS 

temperaments than in general social laws. He is essentially an 
artist, who has attained an elegant and harmonious manner. 
Beginning with poetic plays, he was soon adopted by 
Antoine (La Chance de Frangoise, produced 1888) 
and won his reputation through his most characteristic play, 
Amoureuse (1891). The theme of this is the clash between 
an over- fond wife and a too-busy husband ; the latter finally al- 
lows a lover to profit from his wife's devotion; yet the marital 
bond remains too strong to be broken. As in Hervieu, the 
Nietzschean doctrine of the individual's " right to live " appears 
in this play. The treatment is in the very personal manner of 
Porto-Riche, combining subtle psychology, graceful style, witty 
and characteristic dialogue. Similar qualities appear in Le 
Passe (1897), in which the heroine forgives a Don Juan his 
infidelities for the sake of his charm. The above are drawing- 
room plays, whereas Le vieil Homme (1911) is more romantic 
and unusual. In the majority of his dramas Porto-Riche depicts 
men who are light-o'love, fascinating to women and deliberate 
liars. 

Francois de Curel (b. 1854) , an aristocrat by birth and ideas, 
is interested in morbid psychology, in strong and strange situa- 
tions. He is a poet and a Symbolist and betrays 
Urel the influence of Ibsen. The majority of his plays 

were produced by Antoine, beginning with L'Envers d'une sainte 
and Les Fossiles (both of 1892) . The latter play is a master- 
piece, though of a somber and painful kind. A father and his 
son have loved the same woman, who gives birth to a child, the 
last of the Chantemelles. The rest of this noble family, in one 
way or another, sacrifice their lives in order that this child 
may carry on the name. Aristocrats may be immoral and use- 
less " fossils," but — noblesse oblige. The love of nature, partic- 
ularly of ancestral and immemorial forests, is conspicuous in 
this play, and the author's general message seems to be that 
long-rooted natural characteristics will ultimately win out. So 
in La Fille sauvage (1902), the barbarous heroine is civilized 
only to break out with a more deadly ferocity in the end. In 
Le Repas du lion (1897), an aristocrat who has killed a work- 
man tries to make expiation by a life of humanitarian service; 
but his natural ego is too strong and leads to his undoing. La 



MINOR PLAYWRIGHTS 687 

Nouvelle idole (produced 1899) presents a doctor whose devotion 
to science leads to disastrous results. In most of these plays 
Curel has chosen repellent subjects; he is too contemptuous of 
dramatic laws and technique; but he has an "imaginative 
strangeness " all his own, and if he often leaves reality he thereby 
comes the nearer to romance. 

Closer to his own period is Maurice Donnay (b. 1860), who 
began as a cabaret-artist at the Chat-Noir. His first impor- 
tant play was Amants (1895), concerning the forma- 
tion and the rupture of an " affair " between two 
typical Parisians. In the majority of his plays, light or serious, 
Donnay appears as an " apologist for free love " (Chandler) , 
an anti-feminist and a dramatist of considerable ability, espe- 
cially in the depiction of character. La Douloureuse, L 'autre 
Danger and L'Affranchie are specimens in this manner. He con- 
siders wider social questions in Oiseaux de passage (1904), and 
especially in Le Retour de Jerusalem (1903), one of his strongest 
plays. Here it is a question of a liaison between a Jewess who 
has renounced her faith and an aristocratic Gentile; latent dif- 
ferences make the union unhappy. As a dramatist, Donnay has 
humor and skill, but he lacks profundity. Unlike the chief 
A d oth psychologists, Henri Lavedan (b. 1859) and Jules 
Lemaitre (1853-1914) do not sound a suffi- 
ciently clear individual note to make a lasting impression. 
Lemaitre is a critic of charm and penetration (see Ch. IV, 
below) . In the drama, he has, to be sure, won • notable 
successes: Le Depute Leveau (1890), on the corruption of 
politics; Le Pardon (1895), on reciprocal forgiveness be- 
tween unfaithful spouses; Le Massiere (1905), on the studio- 
world and middle-aged loves. But on the whole Lemaitre 
has been too versatile to be a great artist. The same is true of 
Lavedan, who ranges from the easy cynicism of Le vieux Mar- 
cheur (1899), through the depravity of the Marquis de Priola 
(1902), to the somewhat deliberate idealism of Le Duel (1905). 
The intense patriotism of Servir (1913), is conceived in quite 
a different tone from the satire of Le Prince oVAurec. Lavedan 
has a tolerant breadth and has won popularity at the expense 
of concentration and individuality. 



688 IN DRAMA: THE THREE MOVEMENTS 

3. Romance. 

It has been seen that there were romantic elements in the 
early work of Porto-Riche and throughout the peculiar dramas 
Neo- of Curel. The graceful fancy of Theodore de Ban- 

Romanticism v ju e f ounc i expression in Gringoire (historical) and 
in Riquet a la Houppe {comedie-feerique) ; both plays develop 
the Hugonian antithesis between an ugly body and a beautiful 
soul. The more heroic strain of Hugo was revived in La Fille de 
Roland (1875) by Henri de Bornier, a drama containing both 
poetic and patriotic fire. Bornier, Sardou, Catulle Mendes and 
Frangois Coppee wrote numerous historical plays, many of which 
suggest the spirit of romance. Coppee (see next chapter) is at his 
best in Pour la Couronne (1895). A faithless Balkan Prince be- 
trays his country and is slain by his own son ; the latter shoulders 
the blame of the treachery rather than accuse his dead father. 
The character of Militza, the gipsy girl who loves the hero, 
is very winning, and some of her speeches are in excellent verse. 
Romantic also are the majority of the plays of Jean Richepin 
(b. 1849) , whose bohemian soul finds expression in Le Flibustier 
(Breton characters), in Le Chemineau (1897) where the hero is 
a cheerful follower of the open road, and in Les Truands (1899), 
which resuscitates the medieval vagabonds of Notre-Dame. 
Thus Neo-Romanticism has many interesting plays to its credit, 
and Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac is not an isolated phenom- 
enon. 

We must turn aside for a moment to consider the work of 
the Belgian mystic, Maurice Maeterlinck (b. 1862). For him 
the spirit of romance " dwelt in a Northern land." 
Born and educated at Ghent he has passed most of 
his life on his Flemish estate; but as a youth he brought to 
Paris a taste for dreamy legends and fairy-tales. Then he came 
under the influence of the Symbolists and of Shakespeare; his 
early dramas are all symbolic and his first play, La Princesse 
Maleine (1889) , caused him to be hailed as the " Belgian Shakes- 
peare." What we find rather in this work is a brooding sense 
of mystery, of fatality and of " inexorable death." The feminine 
villain strangles Maleine and is in turn killed by Prince Hjalmar, 
who then commits suicide. But the bald plot is never the thing 



MAETERLINCK 689 

with Maeterlinck, who makes us drink deep of symbolism, mood- 
iness and atmosphere. The whole somber castle gives an en- 
vironment of terror and suspense. The characters are " strange," 
obsessed, dominated by the powers of Nature, who vouchsafes 
only sinister symbols and presentiments. Maeterlinck's pathetic 
puppets are usually a prey to inconsecutive movements and de- 
sires (hence the inconsecutive scenes) and wait passively for 
the Intruder, Death (cf. La Mort, 1913). A number of one- 
act plays emphasize this attitude. In L'Intruse (1890), a family 
expects the death of one of their number. They do not mention 
their fear, which is entirely atmospheric, expressed by monoto- 
nous question and answer about apparently irrelevant things. 
But the "frisson de Pinvisible " mounts through the increasing 
uneasiness of the blind grandfather, until the fated end. Les 
Aveugles (1890) further stresses the terrors of the unseen, and 
Les Sept Princesses (1891) is equally " Maeterlinckian " in its 
fairy-tale background. This vein recurs in Ariane et Barbe- 
bleue, in the tower-scene of Aglavaine et Selysette, and of course 
in L'Oiseau bleu. Such allegorical and fanciful episodes are 
quite in line with Maeterlinck's Symbolism, which should now 
be definitely characterized. Let us choose Pelleas et Melisande 
(1893), the best-known of the dramas which deal with misty 
events and people in some uncharted land. This play has quite 
a distinctive plot, namely the Paolo and Francesca situation. 
Golaud is the old husband, Pelleas the youthful lover and 
brother, Melisande the " strange " young bride. But never did 
a play sound less "triangular." Passion is only vaguely sug- 
gested, and the three love scenes emphasize symbolic values: 
Melisande loses her marriage ring in a fountain; she lets down 
her wonderful hair which envelops and delights Pelleas; and 
reality takes on the spaciousness and poetry of a dream. Sim- 
ilarly, in Aglavaine et Selysette (1896), where it is a question 
of outgoing and incoming sweetheart, the mild Selysette will 
throw herself from a tower to make way for her rival. The 
symbol is found in the slow sinking of the sun indicating the 
approach of death; and the dialogue, as elsewhere in Maeter- 
linck, keeps rhythm with the action. In all these early plays, 
as also in Interieur, La Mort de Tintagiles, and so on, the em- 
phasis is on subconscious intuition, on silence, terror, death and 



690 IN DRAMA: THE THREE MOVEMENTS 

what the author called the " static drama." It is to his credit 
that he has drawn, psychologically speaking, more progression 
and action from this method than might be anticipated. The 
style of his prose is indubitably poetic, but the dialogue, in its 
wilful simplicity and repetition, sounds too often like an Ollen- 
dorff grammar and has lent itself readily to parody. Also, a 
certain obscurity of intention and effort must be recognized. 
But the author always keeps our imaginations quivering. 

It may be that Maeterlinck grew tired of contending with the 
difficulties of his peculiar form. At any rate, in 1902, he made 
His Second a distinct shift. Monna Vanna marks an attempt at 
Phase n legitimate " and fairly plain historical drama. The 

enveloping action is that of the fifteenth-century feud between 
Florence and Pisa. Guido Colonna commands the Pisans and 
the Florentine general, Prinzivalle, insists that Guide's wife shall 
give herself to him in order to deliver her fellow-countrymen. 
When Vanna comes alone to his tent, he suddenly reveals himself 
as an idealistic and respectful lover. Returning to her hus- 
band's camp, Vanna cannot convince him of her innocence, finds 
him too jealous and egotistical and decides to escape with 
Prinzivalle. Barring a certain lack of skill in " preparations," 
the drama is progressive and interesting. But more interesting to 
the author is the psychological problem, concerning the " greater 
love " of Prinzivalle. The total effect is somewhat bewildering. 
Marie Magdeleine (1910) is also more like the conventional 
drama and offers a similar problem. The lovely miracle-play of 
Sceur Beatrice, a medieval legend, is again more characteristic 
of the earlier Maeterlinck, and in UOiseau bleu, the poet- 
dramatist returns to the allegorical field which he has made 
peculiarly his own. Two children, Tyltyl and Mytyl go forth 
to seek the bird of happiness, which they ultimately find at 
home. Their adventures, the symbolic persons and scenes they 
meet with are beautifully rendered. It is an optimistic allegory; 
the author is no longer oppressed by "nightmares"; and since 
there are no impassable barriers to the next world, " il n'y a 
pas de morts." The dead live again in our memories. In the 
sequel, Les Fiangailles (1918), the children have grown up and 
are able to cope with Destiny. So the two former bugbears, 
Death and Fatality, are finally conquered in Maeterlinck's 



ROSTAND 691 

widening view. He has also given expression to his philosophy 
in such books as Le Tresor cles humbles, La Sagesse et la Des- 
tinee, La Mort. But his most individual contribution to latter- 
day literature is in the misty Romanticism of his symbolic plays. 
More in the French Romantic tradition is the work of Edmond 
Rostand (1868-1918). A man of delicate health and tempera- 
ment, his life was short and his period of produc- 
tivity was shorter still. After winning his great suc- 
cess, he was made a member of the Academy (1901) and soon 
retired to his charming home in the Pyrenees, where he spent 
practically the remainder of his life. He began with a volume 
of rather trivial verse (Les Musardises, 1890), in which he 
displays much virtuosity as a rhymester of Banville's school. Of 
his half-dozen plays, the first three are comparatively slight. In 
the manner of Musset and recalling the subject of A quoi revent 
les jeunes filles, Les Romanesques (1894) has yet a pretty wit 
and charm of its own. It presents two young people who long 
for distant loves and adventures. The play is a gentle satire 
on romance by a Romanticist. A higher poetic note is sounded 
in La Princesse lointaine (1895). This dramatizes the story of 
Rudel the troubadour, a lover of the Princess of Tripoli, whom 
he has never seen. As a dying man he sails for Tripoli, where 
the princess will soothe his last hours. Here Rostand adds a 
complication to the legend; the troubadour's lady and his best 
friend fall in love with each other; but they are saved from 
treachery and the princess finally goes to Rudel. The legend 
is picturesquely handled, with developments that recall the 
Tristan story. The play has movement and sentiment. Very 
sentimental is La Samaritaine (1897), in its mingling of earthly 
and heavenly love. The episode of the Samaritan woman is 
retold, largely in Biblical language, but with the addition of 
a good second act, in which Photine proselytizes for Christ. 

None of these plays foretold the power and success of Cyrano 
de Bergerac — comedie hero'ique — whose first representation 
(( c „ (December 28, 1897) was the most notable premiere 
since that of Hernani. Again it seemed that Ro- 
mantic emotion was conquering Paris. Seasoned critics like Faguet 
declared that Cyrano portended a renaissance of the poetic drama, 
while others like Lemaitre saw in it rather an aftermath and 



692 IN DRAMA: THE THREE MOVEMENTS 

a derivative pseudo-revival, which could not set back the clock 
of time. Historically, the latter view seems correct; it is also 
true that Rostand was not greatly original and that he owed 
a great deal to the devices and inspiration of Hugo and even 
of Dumas pere. Nevertheless, Cyrano in itself is a splendid 
Romantic drama and one of the great plays of the century. It 
is also the author's masterpiece, because here he makes the 
best union of poetry and dramatics in a subject that was 
peculiarly well suited to his genius. His own leaning towards 
the precieux and towards purple patches is here justified by 
the character of his hero and the atmosphere of the period 
treated. Cyrano is a high-flown lover, a swaggerer and duellist, 
capable of everything from burlesque to rare self-sacrifice. The 
central theme, by which Cyrano Quixotically serves the love of 
another man — 

Je serai ton esprit, tu seras ma beaute — 

is boldly and successfully handled. The high moments, such as 
the balcony-scene, the death of Christian and the autumnal 
melancholy of the denouement, show a happy blending of sen- 
timent with dramatic power. The historical coloring (c. 1640) 
is ample and excellent. The play constitutes a harmony within 
itself and with its author. 

UAiglon (1900) is not such a masterpiece; it shows a weaker 
and more confused inspiration; but it does not fail to gain 
Oth PI admiration in many respects. The story of the 
" eaglet," Napoleon's son who would fain be a 
Napoleon, offers pathetic and psychological opportunities, which 
Rostand has certainly seized. On the other hand, the dramatic 
movement, the swift spontaneous action of Cyrano, is lacking. 
Such a tendency would be natural, granted the hesitant nature 
of the hero, the cumbering atmosphere of the Austrian court, 
and the numerous secondary schemes and people. The play 
remains, none the less, too long, too elaborate, and too monoto- 
nous. Brilliant scenes and tirades almost redeem this lack of 
progression, especially the epic scene on the plain of Wagram, 
in which the dead battalions come to life before the vision of 
the young prince. His character, the opposition of dream and 
action in his nature, remains the best feature of the play. 



ROSTAND 693 

These two dramas, sponsored and personified respectively by 
the great Coquelin and by Sarah Bernhardt, had swept Europe 
and America. People waited eagerly to see what Rostand would 
do next. As a matter of fact, ten years of silence intervened — 
and then Chantecler appeared (1910). 

A plaintive and hectic note had already been audible in 
L'Aiglon and (probably for reasons of health) is exaggerated to 
the point of peevishness in Chantecler. This drama lacks moral 
and dramatic balance. It symbolizes the pathos of an inner 
struggle towards beauty and nobility, but this excellent feature 
is partially marred by the author's failings and conspicuous 
mannerisms. The donnees include the idea of a cock who not 
only rules his barnyard but, as poet and prophet, causes the 
sun to rise with his crowing. He falls in love with a hen- 
pheasant (the Eternal Feminine) , who leads him to the Guinea- 
hen's " five-o'clock " tea. A blackbird typifies worldly wit, a 
nightingale the power of song, owls and toads the ugly side of 
life. Thus the play is a symbolic allegory and has links with 
Aristophanes, the Roman du Renard and La Fontaine. But un- 
like the last-named, Rostand has not kept the balance between 
the animal and the human side ; his figures are too palpably and 
too highly human, parading under skins and feathers. Uncon- 
vincing on the stage, the play well bears reading and has many 
fine passages ; yet the esprit and the tendency to puns which the 
cock berates in the blackbird, are too conspicuous in the language 
throughout. Chantecler is a mixture of too many different 
things (allegory, satire, extravaganza) , and " nous sommes loin 
de la verve eclatante et primesautiere de Cyrano." 

Rostand's influence is visible in certain drames by Catulle 
Mendes (Scarron, etc.) and in such graceful fairy-comedies as 
La Fleur merveilleuse (1910) by Zamacois. But 
-. Rostand's imitators chiefly serve to show his own 
superiority. The more obvious elements in his power and appeal 
are the following: First, a clean and brilliant wit, at its best 
capable of satiric pungency or of delicious turns of speech; 
at the worst descending to puns and verbal pyrotechnics. 
Second, a capacity, largely Hugonian in its origin, for dramatic 
situations, suspensions and well-combined coups de theatre — ex- 
amples are the duel in Act I of Cyrano, the dramatic shifts 



694 IN DRAMA: THE THREE MOVEMENTS 

between loyalty and love in Act III of La Princesse lointaine. 
Third, Rostand's personal response to the quality of idealistic 
love and of chivalrous deeds; this underlies the panache or 
" swagger " of Cyrano and appears in the author's panegyric on 
Don Quixote. Finally, a poetic power compact of imagery, 
sentiment, admirable phrasing; a power that ranges from a 
winning and tender pathos, as in the finales of his best plays, to 
the superb vision of Wagram in UAiglon and the lyric sweep of 
his balcony scene in Cyrano. This talent has left its mark on 
many notable single lines as well as on the longer speeches of 
Cyrano and the Eaglet — passages that are likely to endure 
when the voices of carping critics have ceased forever. 



CHAPTER III 
IN POETRY: SENTIMENT AND SYMBOLISM 

In the last decades of the century, the most notable Parnas- 
sian poet was Heredia, whose work has already been treated (Bk. 
VII, Ch. Ill) . Nearly every writer of verse, men as various as 
Anatole France, Coppee and Verlaine, began by a volume in the 
Parnassian manner, which shows the profound influence of this 
school; yet the revolt against Realism included a revolt against 
the cold marmoreal perfection of Leconte de Lisle. The chief 
dissidents among the younger generation were either sentimental 
poets like Sully Prudhomme and Coppee or the founders of the 
new school who were known as les Decadents or les Symbolistes. 

Sully Prudhomme (1839-1907) was a youth of delicate health 
and a meditative disposition. He passed through Parnassus and 
Sully through an unfortunate love-affair which gave him 

Prudhomme ^ e better part of his lyrical inspiration. Both in- 
fluences are found in such early poems as Les Solitudes (1869). 
His best volume is Les vaines Tendr esses (1875). His growing 
reputation caused him to be elected to the Academy in 1881. 
From now on his life was filled with conscientious thought and 
effort. He published two long semi-didactic poems, La Justice 
(1878) and Le Bonheur (1888). He received, in 1901, the Nobel 
prize for literary excellence. 

Not greatly original, Sully Prudhomme is the most representa- 
tive poet of his period. He reflects the chief lyrical tendencies of 
the century: sentiment like that of Lamartine, philosophic poems 
somewhat in the manner of Vigny, statuesque Parnassian imi- 
tations and hard brilliant sonnets. He reflects particularly and 
with great conscientiousness the " age of science and doubt " ; 
the struggle between an ethical spirituality and the unresponsive 
universe deeply impregnated his thought. His primary poetic 
qualities are sensibility, tenderness, melancholy; and the philo- 
sophic " meditation " tempered with sentiment seems to be his 

695 



696 IN POETRY: SENTIMENT AND SYMBOLISM 

forte. Sensibility is the most conspicuous element in his earliest 
work — Stances et poemes (1865) and Les Epaves (published 
posthumously in 1908). In these volumes the poet sounds the 
whole gamut of disappointed passion, from direct jealousy and 
baffled desire, through the mournfulness of memories, down to 
moving suggestions of the happiness that might have been. 
Some preciosity and infelicities of expression occur in his first 
volume, which, however, already gives evidence of great skill in 
he Vase brise, his most famous poem. Les vaines Tendresses 
would indicate by its significant title that the poet is seeking 
a wider and less personal expression of feeling. He philoso- 
phizes his emotion in such admirable lyrics as La Beaute and 
Sur la mort; but the philosophy remains pessimistic. Sim- 
ilarly the sonnets of Les Epreuves are conceived on an objec- 
tive plane and show a most artistic mingling of thought and 
sentiment. As for Les vaines Tendresses, that volume well 
illustrates several of Sully Prudhomme's gifts; for example, his 
artistic use of the refrain in the poem called Ressemblance; 
he cares for a girl or he finds her melancholy-minded or she 
passes on her way, all because: 

Vous ressemblez a ma jeunesse. 

This orderly symmetrical construction, recalling Gautier and 
much admired by Gautier, is very frequent with Sully Prud- 
homme. Again, his capacity for composing striking lines and 
couplets may be illustrated from the same volume: 

Je t'aime en attendant mon eternelle epouse; 
or witness the declaration that for the happiness of poets, 

II leur faut une solitude 
Ou voltige un baiser. 

Sully Prudhomme's delicacy of treatment is marked throughout 
his work. This delicacy is often like the brush of a bee's wing 
or the coloring of a wild flower, as where he demands: 

Comment fais-tu les grands amours, 
Petite ligne de la bouche? 

It occasionally runs into over-delicacy or preciosity, for in- 
stance, when he declares that he honors in the writer's pen 
(la plume) a recollection of the bird's soaring wing. But he 



SULLY PRUDHOMME 697 

naturally strengthened and sobered his vocabulary as he ma- 
tured, and his later sonnets show a fine taste in diction and a 
masterly impulsion in their movement. It is not surprising that 
the sonnet-form was a favorite with this poet, from Les Epreuves 
through La Justice (which is entirely written in sonnets). As 
Lemaitre early pointed out, these sonnets are usually composed 
upon sustained metaphors (or symbols), with the application 
splendidly developed. 

As with the sonnet, so with Sully Prudhomme's entire work: 
from the sentiment, he generalizes the idea or the conflict, then 
finds the concrete embodiment. Thus his best work 
seems to lie in those fields where his personal mel- 
ancholy is swayed to a larger expression and where his spirit 
comes into grave conscious strife with the ever-waiting problems. 
For most of us this tendency is best voiced in his lyrics. His 
two big philosophic poems, or allegories, La Justice and Le 
Bonheur deal respectively with the idea that man's moral order 
may be imposed upon the universe and with the ideal of service 
as making for the best happiness. The narrative value of these 
poems is not great, and they are not free from prosing and in- 
coherence ; but they contain thought, faith and fine lyrical inter- 
ludes. The poet's chief message seems to lie in his insistence on 
the necessity for idealism combined with reverence for natural 
law. His versification is simple and conservative, claiming none 
of the later licenses. In thought, feeling and form he can be 
readily apprehended by Anglo-Saxon readers. 

Sentimental poetry is also the province of Frangois Coppee 
(1842-1908) . He was a poor boy and learned in the Latin Quar- 
c , ter that sympathy with humble life which is his out- 

standing trait. His lean years lasted until after 1870, 
when a series of dramatic successes made his fame. Coppee was 
an assiduous playwright and a short-story writer of some note; 
but his real contributions to literature are in the field of poetry. 
He too learned technique from the Parnassians, dedicating Le 
Reliquaire (1866) to Leconte de Lisle; then he declared himself 
in favor of more emotion and warmth than the Parnassians 
possessed. This warmth is found in the three chief aspects of 
Coppee 's work: love-poetry, stories in verse, and records of 
humble life. The first kind is illustrated by Les Intimites, which 



698 IN POETRY: SENTIMENT AND SYMBOLISM 

gives, in tableaux, a fairly complete lover's progress, and by 
UExilee, written to a Norwegian girl. The narrative poem of 
Olivier is a kind of Rolla brought up to date, and indeed Coppee 
has much of Musset's sentiment and grace. His love-lyrics 
show sincerity, charm and simplicity in the midst of compli- 
cations. Many of his well-known chansons (for example, the 
lines beginning " Vous aurez beau faire et beau dire ") belong 
in this group. His versified tales (La Tete de la Sultane, or 
La Greve des forgerons) are numerous and show much skill. 
But most characteristic of Coppee is the collection called Les 
Humbles (1872), in which the "short and simple annals of the 
poor " are given sympathetic expression. Coppee here follows 
the Wordsworthian theory and the example of Sainte-Beuve ; but 
his Parisian scenes are more effective than those of " Joseph De- 
lorme," and his technique is better. It is in line with the Real- 
istic movement that Coppee should dwell on the fortunes of the 
shabby-genteel, of nursemaids, keepers of Mosques, and even of 
grocers — 

C'etait un tout petit epicier de Montrouge. 

The bald simplicity of this line suggests Coppee 's limitations as 
a poet. 

Impassivity and Parnassian technique were definitely rejected 
by the " Symbolistes " and the " Decadents," who constitute the 
.. '"" : most significant school of the fin de siecle. Symbolism 
in the wider sense, as the concrete embodiment of an 
idea or emotion, is nothing new in French literature and may be 
found in the poetry of Vigny and Hugo as well as in the fiction of 
Daudet. The ultra-modern use of the word has been illustrated 
in connection with Maeterlinck (see preceding chapter) ; recent 
poets are " Symbolistic " in so far as they prefer vague suggestion 
to clear statement and in so far as they suggest mystery and 
magic by the use of haunting music and shadowy images. It is 
interesting to note that the Symbolists are mostly of exotic origin 
(Belgian, American or Greek) and that their effects seem more 
nearly allied to the spirit of English poetry than to the clear 
ethos of the French. Wilful impressionism and subjectivity often 
make their work obscure and artificial; but at its best Sym- 



THE SYMBOLISTS 699 

bolism added new and rich sensations to latter-day poetry. Pro- 
testing against all forms of Realism, preferring the foreign 
influence of the English Pre-Raphaelites and of Wagner, the 
school began to be formed shortly after 1870 and reached its 
apogee about 1885. Its members were then styled Decadents by 
the critics, and Verlaine was willing to adopt the term ; but Jean 
Moreas, a Greek, suggested the nomenclature of " Symbolists," 
which is more widely inclusive and which has prevailed. Yet 
historically it seems best to consider the followers of Verlaine as 
les Decadents and the followers of Mallarme as more narrowly 
les Symbvlistes. (The English terms, " Symbolism " and " Sym- 
bolists," may be used of the whole movement.) The most 
important members of the (joint) school were Paul Verlaine as 
their chief poet and Stephane Mallarme as their chief law-giver ; 
men of foreign birth like Moreas, Rodenbach and Verhaeren, 
Stuart Merrill and Viele-Griffin ; wild men like Arthur Rimbaud, 
Jules Laforgue and other " poetes maudits"; Gustave Kahn, 
Henri de Regnier and others still living. Not all of the above 
poets were consistent Symbolists, and many lesser names could 
be added to the list. The boundaries in which they moved were 
naturally elastic. They used certain new journals for their 
propaganda (La Renaissance, later La Plume, still later the 
Mercure de France), they included theoreticians like Mallarme 
or Gustave Kahn, and they effected a considerable revolution 
against the laws of French versification. We can consider only 
a few of the most prominent poets. 

Paul Verlaine (1844-1896) was not only the leader among 
the "Decadents"; he was also the greatest poet of the whole 
. school, and stands out as a distinct if erratic person- 

ality. He was an inspired singer of vagabond emo- 
tions, in character an " enfant de Boheme," a person of disorderly 
life who divided his time between cafes, prisons, and hospitals. 
He offers strange alternations of sensuality and mysticism. The 
naive and winning note in his religious poems would lead us to 
approve his conversions, except for their ephemeral character. 
Totally unfitted for domesticity, Verlaine deeply loved his wife, 
who inspired his best poems of sentiment; but when this grande 
passion reached its end in a separation, he turned to lesser and 
baser loves, frankly sensual. His head was like that of Socrates 



700 IN POETRY: SENTIMENT AND SYMBOLISM 

— but Socrates turned into a satyr, worshiping Venus and 
Bacchus. When drunk, the poet would quarrel with his friends, 
among whom was the grotesque and sinister figure of Arthur 
Rimbaud. This ultra-Symbolist had a warping influence upon 
Verlaine, causing the final rupture with his wife as well as the 
longest of his imprisonments. 

Verlaine, like many others, began with a Parnassian volume, 
Poemes saturniens (1866). The poetry here is mostly objec- 
His Work ^ ve anc * descriptive \ ft a l so echoes Baudelaire in an 
ironic " saturnine " note, together with a taste for 
subtle and morbid (macabre) sensations. The distinct chiseling 
of outlines is in contrast to Verlaine's later manner, which has 
the deliberate vagueness of Symbolism. A delightful volume of 
Fetes galantes (1869), after Watteau, incorporates eighteenth- 
century art and grace. In this stanza from Clair de lune, the 
poet resuscitates the ghosts of the old regime in terms that fit 
his own vagabond Muse: 

Your soul is as a moonlit landscape fair, 
Peopled with maskers delicate and dim, 
That play on lutes and dance and have an air 
Of being sad in their fantastic trim. 

La Bonne Chanson (1870) , written in honor of his wife, celebrates 
the intoxication of their engagement and honeymoon; it repre- 
sents the transition from objective poetry to personal sentiment. 
This was Verlaine's favorite volume and has genuine lyric 
feeling. His Romances sans paroles (1874) mark a revolutionary 
date in the history of Symbolism and reveal a new musical 
manner — 

De la musique avant toute chose, 

and the power of suggestion — 

Car nous voulons la Nuance encor, 
Pas la Couleur, rien que la Nuance. 
(Art poetique) 

The Romances are full of Symbolistic impressionism, an elusive 
mixture of sensations and moods. Verlaine's double conversion, 
religious and poetical, is of this period. He became a fervent 
Catholic, a believer, if not a consistent practitioner. His faith 
is emotional and mystical rather than intellectual or active; 



VERLAINE 701 

but it produced some ardent religious outbursts which figure in 
the "delicate and penetrating" volume called Sagesse (1881). 
His poetry has now become completely Symbolistic (observe the 
lines beginning " Vous voila, vous voila, pauvres bonnes pen- 
sees "), and the theory here manifest has been thus summarized: 
this " versified music . . . would do more than accompany the 
idea ; it would evoke the sensation, the memory and the true cor- 
respondence, as a perfume represents . . . visions and images." 
Baudelaire is evidently behind this doctrine of " Correspondences." 
But where Baudelaire and Gautier had appealed mainly to the 
eye, the Symbolists (in a wider sense) appeal primarily to the 
ear and add the element of haunting melody to French poetics. 
On this acount and because of its religious values, Sagesse is 
Verlaine 's finest volume. Jadis et naguere (1884), as the title 
indicates, is a selection from his various phases and tendencies. 
It is his last important volume. Thereafter his work becomes 
more and more " decadent," and need not be considered here. 

Lacking any sustained moral sense, Verlaine vibrates from 
indulgence to repentance and back again; he reacts to real emo- 
tion after mere sensation, and records both experiences with equal 
frankness. His naive sincerity is a chief trait; also Verlaine 
is essentially the musical impressionist of his time. Many of 
his verses have a great charm, due to the personal wayward 
touch, which is often winning, pure and delightful, freely and 
appropriately expressed. His charm, his sincerity, his power of 
harmonious suggestion make Verlaine a true poet. Such a 
lyric as UHeure exquise conveys all his best qualities: 

La lune blanche 
Luit dans les bois, 
De chaque branche 
Part une voix 
Sous la ramee . . . 

bien-aimee! 

L'etang reflete, 
Profond miroir, 
La silhouette 
Du saule noir 
Ou le vent pleure. 

Revons, c'est l'heure. 



702 IN POETRY: SENTIMENT AND SYMBOLISM 

Un vaste et tendre 
Apaisement 
Semble descendre 
Du firmament 
Que Tastre irise . . . 

C'est l'heure exquise! 

Standing for a spontaneous and most personal expression, 
Verlaine derives the principle of originality from emotion rather 

His Poetics ^ an * rom a reasone( ^ art - His Art poetique, already 
quoted, is averse to declamation (" Prends l'elo- 
quence et tords-lui le cou ") and is equally averse to abstract 
thought and esprit; these qualities are merely " litterature " ; 
Verlaine prefers dreamy twilight suggestion to logical statement 
or composition. So any one of his Romances will have a musical 
rather than a logical unity. His poetics, then, are based on the 
belief that verse should be rendered extremely supple, in order to 
reflect directly the soul and the mood. But he and his circle 
stop short of le vers Wore. The Alexandrine, however, acquires 
the greatest possible liberty: the medial and the final caesuras 
can fall on the most insignificant syllables (including mute e's) ; 
free enjambement and weak rimes put little emphasis on the 
end of a line; masculine and feminine lines need no longer 
alternate, and Verlaine affects VImpair or an uneven number of 
syllables in his verse (cf. Swinburne) ; he allows assonances, 
tone-color, onomatopeia and repetends (cf. Poe and the last 
stanza in UHeure exquise) ; finally, three-fold divisions (ter- 
naires) are frequent in his Alexandrines. 

Verlaine was elected " Prince des Poetes " at the death of 
Leconte de Lisle (1894) ; Mallarme was Verlaine's successor in 
this title. 1 The latter's role was scarcely that of a chef d'ecole, 
whereas Mallarme had a really formative influence on many 
poets. For convenience, however, and in spite of the fact that 
the same men would sometimes frequent Verlaine's cafes and 
Mallarme's " Tuesdays," we may distinguish between the 
" Verlainiens " and the " Mallarmeens." The former would in- 
clude, according to A. Barre, both the " Melancoliques " and the 

1 At the death of Mallarme (1898), Leon Dierx was elected "prince," and after 
him Paul Fort (see Epilogue) . The system was usually a voting-contest conducted 
through various newspapers and magazines. 



RIMBAUD 703 

" Excentriques " ; melancholy were Samain, Rodenbach, and 
Maeterlinck; eccentric or " Poetes maudits " were Corbiere, 
Rimbaud, Jammes and others. All of them were " Decadents," 
and were not ashamed of the fact. 

The only important poet of Verlaine's immediate circle was 
Arthur Rimbaud (1854?-91), the evil genius of the Verlaine 
. household. A savage and singular prodigy, he wrote 

all his poetry in his teens, inflicted himself upon 
Paris for a few years, then disappeared adventurously into the 
wilds of Africa. He wrote only a few small volumes — Une 
Saison en enfer (" psychological autobiography ") and Les 
Illuminations (prose-poems). His two most notable poems 
(Poesies completes, 1895) are Le Bateau ivre, a sustained meta- 
phor about a wandering bark which suffered from Baudelairian 
nostalgia; and the famous Sonnet des voyelles, which states the 
doctrine of color in sounds: 

A noir, E blanc, I rouge, U vert, bleu, voyelles . . . 

In this notion of tone-color, in his deliberate naivete and his 
fantastic eccentricity, Rimbaud is Decadent; but he is nearer 
the school of Mallarme (cf. Rene Ghil) in his partial use of 
vers libre, in his compressed syntax and wilful obscurity, as 
also in his interesting habit of coordinating closely images and 
suggestions around one main metaphor. 

Francis Jammes (b. 1868), a Meridional and bucolic poet, is 
the heir of Rimbaud in his emphasis on naivete; the instinctive 
And other is for him the main source of poetry and truth. 
" Decadents " g u ^ h e belongs to a more recent and contemporary 
school in his use of vers libre and in his externality. He leaves 
his " soul " alone to write, in allegory or narrative, of objects, 
animals and people; of paving-stones, donkeys and humble 
farmers in the South (cf. De L'Angelus de Vaube a VAngelus du 
soir, 1898). After his conversion, Jammes writes of Nature as 
the manifestation of God (Les Georgiques chretiennes, 1912). 
Much of his work is realistic, prosaic and dull. More truly 
poetic is the form of the " Melancoliques," Albert Samain (1858- 
1900) and Georges Rodenbach (1855-98) , who import into France 
reminiscences of their Flemish and Belgian origins. Both of 
these poets are inspired by the dead past, and both strive to 



704 IN POETRY: SENTIMENT AND SYMBOLISM 

fuse intimately their souls with past beauty; in that respect 
they are Symbolistic, and they are Decadents in the mournful 
and anemic quality of their utterances. Samain has drawn 
charming eighteenth- century vignettes, of a delicate fantasy 
recalling Verlaine's Fetes galantes. Such vignettes are found 
in Au Jar din de V In] ante (1893), which also contains many 
scenes from the faded grandeur of Spain: 

Mon ame est une infante en robe de parade . . . 2 

But Samain's form is regularly Parnassian (cf. Aux Flancs du 
vase, 1898), and he fills this mold with his plaintive minor 
strains. Georges Rodenbach lived at Brussels and wrote haunt- 
ingly of Bruges-la-morte, a prose-work of 1892. Among his 
poetic volumes are Le Foyer et les Champs and Les Tristesses. 
As in the case of Samain, Rodenbach's delicate health left its 
traces on his " art indubitablement mievre, fluide et decadent " 
(Viele-Griffin). 

The leadership which Verlaine rarely asserted was wielded 
by Stephane Mallarme (1842-98), idealist, theorist and pro- 
fessor. Mallarme taught French in London and 
Mallarme 

English in Paris and the provinces. He had some 

contact with the Pre-Raphaelites and with the Provengal poets 
(see p. 609). His conversation and his personal magnetism 
attracted a number of young men to the cause of Symbolism. 
Otherwise he led an extremely retiring and self-centered life. 
Highly cultivated, an aesthete even to the point of publishing 
a magazine of fashion, his ingrowing talent finally turned to 
great obscurity and sterility. He published little, mostly in 
scattered form (collected Vers et prose, 1893). UApres-Midi 
oVun faune was printed in 1876, but had little fame until 
Debussy's music was supported by Nijinski's dancing. The well- 
named prose Divagations are of 1897. 

For Verlaine poetry meant emotion and spontaneity; for 
Mallarme it was a conscious art, and its chief substance was 
intellectual. The Platonic Idea (la Pensee) of an emotion, not 

2 This is the kind of thing derided in that delightful parody on Symbolism, Les 
Deliquescences d' Adore Floupette (1885): 

Je voudrais que mon ame fut 
Aussi roide qu'un affut, 
Aussi remplie qu'un vieux fut. 



MALLARME 705 

the thing itself, was to be approached and adumbrated. The 
approach is infinite, the Absolute unattainable, and so Mallarme, 
like certain heroes of Balzac's, spoils his work by too much de- 
votion. Poe, whom he translated {Ulalume, Le Corbeau), and 
Baudelaire, whom he imitated, encouraged his hyperaesthesia. 
Despairing of plain words as an adequate medium, Mallarme, 
like Verlaine, took refuge in their Symbolic and musical allu- 
siveness. This is the chief point of agreement between the two 
schools. But Mallarme, with his thoroughgoing intellect, held 
that each line of a poem must contribute to the whole symphonic 
effect: a poem must be an enigma for the vulgar, chamber- 
music for the initiated ; further, the chief Idea or metaphor must 
be attended by numerous clustering minor images, which chime 
in with the central theme; and these analogies are, in his later 
work, crowded together with such compression as to break the 
molds of syntax and violate every principle of clearness. An 
example of; this last point may be found in the first line of 
Le Tombeau d'Edgar Poe: 

Tel qu'en Lui-meme enfin Veternite le change, 
Le Poete suscite avec un glaive nu 
Son siecle epouvante de n'avoir pas conmi 
Que la mort triomphait dans cette voix etrange. 

(The last three lines may partly clarify the first) . L'Apres-Midi 
d'un Jaune illustrates the process of adumbrating the Idea. In 
a manner which recalls Browning's Caliban upon Setebos, a faun 
mutters his postmeridial longings ; it is " un reve de desir lon- 
guement raconte," but these are very shadowy desires, the 
nymphs are not real, and the faun ultimately resolves his dream 
in music—- as Mallarme would do. Again, the clustered and 
condensed metaphor, the sustaining symbol of the poem may be 
illustrated by the following quotation: 3 

Un cygne d'autrefois se souvient que c'est lui 
Magnifique, mais qui, sans espoir, se delivre 
Pour n'avoir pas chante la region ou vivre 

Quand du sterile hiver a resplendi 1'ennui. . . . 

In short, the swan, typifying the cold and sterile poet, now re- 
grets his sterility, but still holds high his head. The preference 

8 It will be observed that this poet's versification is strictly Parnassian. He 
takes no liberties in that respect. 



706 IN POETRY: SENTIMENT AND SYMBOLISM 

for white and glacial images, displayed in this sonnet, is evident 
also in the dramatic fragment called Herodiade; the heroine has 
a chilly charm and a cold elaboration not unlike that of 
Salammbo. 

All this abstruseness may seem out of place, but such is the 
soul of Mallarme. Like each of his poems, Mallarme himself 
offers a fascinating problem. How far will the future justify 
his belief that a piece of verse may be completely orchestrated? 
How far can suggestion replace direct speech? The writer, we 
know, has to struggle with a vulgarized medium, in contrast to 
the musician. How far is it possible to lift everyday language, 
Symbolically — 

Donner un sens plus pur aux mots de la tribu, 

and by apposition and ellipsis, drown ordinary syntax in order 
that the ideal Words may emerge? 

Mallarme's theory was clearer and more fertile than his prac- 
tice. The questions just enounced attracted a whole band of 
young disciples, who frequented his "Tuesdays"; among these 
were such poets as Jules Laforgue, Jean Moreas, Gustave Kahn, 
Henri de Regnier, F. Viele-Griffin, Paul Claudel and others. 
Since individualism is characteristic of the movement, it nat- 
urally broke up into smaller movements: an " Ecole symbolique 
et harmoniste " was formed with Rene Ghil and Stuart Merrill 
as leaders, and later we find the name of Emile Verhaeren in a 
" philosophico-instrumentist " group ; also Moreas broke loose 
and established his "Ecole Romane " (1891). More or less 
connected with the Symbolists were such men as the Comte 
Robert de Montesquiou( the original of Huysmans' Des Esseintes 
and, it is said, of the Peacock in Rostand's Chantecler) ; and 
Leon Dierx (1838-1912), third "Prince des Poetes," whose dis- 
tinguished and dreamy verses — Les Levres closes, Les Amants — 
largely antedate Symbolism and are of a Parnassian cast. 

Let us consider a few of these poets. No other Parnassian 

Symbolist is of the caliber of Mallarme. But with Gustave Kahn 

(b. 1859), we reach the theory and practice of le 

vers libre, as it has since so abundantly flourished. 

Neither the theories of a certain Delia Rocca (a Peruvian) nor 

the " dislocations " of Rimbaud and others can deprive Kahn of 



VERS-LIBRISTES 707 

his proper credit: he is the inventor of modern free verse, al- 
though his kind of free verse is not quite what Americans 
understand by the term. Kahn was an enterprising critic and 
fighter, who founded several reviews and pushed his theories 
with a will. His point of departure was that the line (le vers) 
consists not of measured syllables, but of metrical units — that is, 
single words or clauses of varying length. Hence definite line- 
lengths are unessential. The same principle holds good for the 
strophe, which should be " ondoyante et libre." Kahn does not 
wholly abolish mute e's, nor does he abolish rime when rime is 
convenient; he allows assonanced endings, internal rimes and 
repetends. The symmetry of verse is gone, but Kahn maintains 
that its distinctive rhythm and cadence remain; he admits that 
his free verse borders very closely on prose and that a period 
of anarchy has begun — because the " rhythme propre " for Kahn 
may be improper for any one else. His chief volumes illustrate 
these tendencies. Les Palais nomades (1887) is based on the 
charming idea of open-air dreaming, and the volume has been 
called " aussi idealement vagabond que La Maison du Berger " 
(Mendes). Original and abundant metaphors adorn the Chan- 
sons d'amant (1891) and La Pluie et le beau temps (1895). 
Fresh figures and quick-changing colors decorate Le Livre 
d'Images (1897). This and subsequent volumes contain much of 
what is now called Imagism. The beginning of a poem entitled 
Provence may illustrate Kahn's Imagism and his free verse: 

C'est une face fine et legere; 

pourtant quelle noblesse vit dans ses traits menus, 

et sa chair est claire, 

non qu'elle evoque aucun aspect floral; 

elle est chair, et elle est claire 

comme de la lumiere astrale. 

Others now followed on the blazed trail, each in his own 
peculiar fashion. We may pause with two poets of American 
The birth, but of French upbringing and culture: Francis 

Americans Viele-Grimn (b. Norfolk, Va., 1864) and Stuart 
Merrill (1863-1915). Viele-Grifim, whose free form is clearer 
than that of Kahn, opposes his fluent verse to the rigidity of the 
Parnassians. He is a healthy poet, of abundant if facile inspi- 
ration and production; his emotions are variously and harmo- 



708 IN POETRY: SENTIMENT AND SYMBOLISM 

niously expressed. He is one of the leaders of the later Sym- 
bolistic or " ideo-realiste " movement (cf. Jammes, Verhaeren, 
Paul Fort). His idea is to celebrate " la Vie," all the way from 
children's dances, through the oncoming of Spring in Touraine, 
to the revamping of mystical legends. Such are the contents of 
Cueille d'avril (1886), of Joies and of Clarte de Vie. In La Che- 
vouchee d'Yeldis and La Legende ailee de Wieland le forgeron 
(1900) the poet's aim has been to embody the soul of ancient 
legends in an artful and ultra-modern Symbolism (Mendes). 
Viele-Griffin has also a very personal rhythm, and his free verse 
is considered too free, too American, by certain French critics. 
The same strictures are passed on Stuart Merrill, who, however, 
is less addicted to vers Wore than is Viele-Griffin. Both of these 
men usually keep rime or near-rime. Merrill tends to rough 
rhythms and unequal lines. He began as a complicated melodist, 
a la Mallarme, and his earlier Les Fastes (1891) are sonorous 
and obscure. Les Quatres Saisons (1900) show less " instrumen- 
tation " and more breadth of treatment, in their mingling of 
Pantheism and sociology. Merrill was known both in New York 
and France as a socialist and a reformer. So he too left the 
ivory tower of Symbolism for the broader conflicts of life. 

The greatest modern Symbolist, the most distinguished French 
poet now living, is Henri de Regnier (b. 1864) . But he is really 
. . an eclectic, a reconciler of the several schools. He 

has written both free and Parnassian verse, usually 
in a classical spirit, as regards both inspiration and formal beauty. 
The final flower of Symbolism, he is also a more gifted and 
virile Samain in the complexity of the influences which he has 
undergone, taking form in numerous measures and manners. An 
aristocrat by birth and persuasion, he has elaborately revived 
French history and traditions in La Cite des Eaux (Versailles) 
and more particularly in his novels. 4 He began as an adherent 
of Mallarme, whose circle he frequented for ten years. The 
results appear in such early volumes as Apaisement (1886), 
Poemes anciens et romanesques (1890), especially Tel qu'en 
songe (1892), where we find " une ame hautaine, inflniment me- 
lancolique, eprise de reve, de mystere et d'ideal . . . ob- 
sedee des secretes correspondances des choses." These are the 

« The majority of these belong to the twentieth century. See Epilogue. 



HENRI DE REGNIER 709 

familiar hall-marks of Symbolism. Here we find such titles as 
Le Songe de la Foret or Motifs de Legende et de Melancolie; here 
we meet with certain " personnages emblematiques " and cap- 
italized symbols, Cavaliers and Princesses, the Beast and the 
Sword. In those days Henri de Regnier dwelt in a golden palace 
" with onyx columns " ( Jean deGourmont), but he showed already 
a preference for Greek nudes and semi-mythological subjects. 
His cadenced and restrained vers libre is among the best French 
examples of the style; its rhythm and its harmony are distinct 
throughout his career. But he uses it less in his second period, 
which is a return to the Parnassian standard. A " free " 
versifier has the freedom even to revert to the set form of rime 
and meter, and perhaps Regnier was the more disposed to do 
this after he became (1896) the son-in-law of Heredia. At any 
rate, Les Jeux rustiques et divins (1897) and Les Medailles 
d'argile (1900) not only reveal a classical (antique) inspiration 
but frequently " transpose " the kind of subjects and " triumphs " 
that Heredia preferred. Often, too, it is not a question of trans- 
position but of straight Parnassian technique, particularly in 
sonnets. This influence continues in La Sandale ailee (1906), 
but here and subsequently Regnier tends towards a third develop- 
ment, the return to Life, the "ideo-realiste " or " naturiste " 
standpoint. So he bids farewell to the Forest of his olden 
dreams, the Forest which he apostrophizes as: 

Foret, toi, l'innombrable et pareille a la mer, 
toi, dont le parfum est, tour a tour, amer, 
Delicieux, farouche et fort, comme la Vie . . . 
Je viens a toi, Foret, je veux vivre. J'oublie 
Que tu fus autrefois fabuleuse a mes yeux. 
Les heros de mon reve en ont. re joint les dieux. 

Poetry like this, with its elegance and serenity, illustrates 
the classical, one might almost say the conventional side of 
Regnier. His larger task was " d'academiser le Symbolisme " 
— and he was made an Academician in 1911. Thus together with 
Symbolism, le vers libre of the best type was officially recognized. 
Free verse offers even more dangers in French than in English, 
because of the slighter tonic accent and the greater peril of 
dispensing with rime; the results are likely to be quite prosaic, 
especially where the writer's sense of beauty has become im- 



710 IN POETRY: SENTIMENT AND SYMBOLISM 

paired; but the best French vers-libristes have kept both rime 
and their sense of beauty. All the more credit then to such 
poets as Regnier, who can pour old wine into new bottles with 
skill and poetic success. That great metaphor of the creative 
instinct called Le Vase (from Les Jeux rustiques et divins) is a 
perfect example of verse so free that it soars and yet remains 
bound to earth by the lightest of traditional fetters. 



CHAPTER IV 
IN CRITICISM 

Nineteenth-century criticism, so supple and Protean in its 
forms, continues to offer a wide variety of standpoints. Among 
the writers may be distinguished: first, the scientific critics and 
the historians of literature; secondly, the critiques d'idees; 
thirdly, the critiques de genres and the Impressionists. 

The contact of modern scientific scholarship with criticism 
has served to direct the latter more and more towards the careful 
. historical study of literature. As examples of this 
tendency we cannot neglect the work of Gaston Paris 
and of M. Gustave Lanson. Gaston Paris (1839-1903), the son 
of Paulin Paris, was the leading scholar of his generation in the 
domain of Romance Philology. As professor at the College de 
France and the Ecole des hautes Etudes, as editor, investigator 
and Academician, he embodied the spirit of disinterested research ; 
he had a thorough knowledge of Old French, a discriminating 
literary taste and a fine personality. These qualities appear in 
the Histoire poetique de Charlemagne (1865), the study of 
Villon for the Grands Ecrivains series (1901), and especially 
in the Poemes et legendes du moyen age (1900), a subject which 
the author has done so much to clarify. Paris left no magnum 
opus; his incessant industry and his dispersive intellectual curi- 
osity resulted in many monographs and in establishing him as 
the authority in all that appertains to Old French. Here he 
preserved excellently the proportion between the linguistic and 
the literary side of Romance scholarship. His talent was well 
balanced, well rounded; in this respect he was a modern humanist, 
as in the courtesy and charm of his personal power. His in- 
fluence is still felt in the universities of France and of America. 
With Paris, then, literary criticism usually concerns itself with 
philological and historical issues rather than with fixed aesthetic 
judgments. 

711 



712 IN CRITICISM 

Criticism more narrowly scientific was represented, between 
Taine and Brunetiere, by the work of Emile Hennequin (1859- 
„ . 1888) the author of La Critique scientifique (1888) 

and Les Ecrivains francises (1889). Hennequin was 
a determinist and an evolutionist. He combated the rigidity of 
Taine's methods and endeavored to set up a science of " Estho- 
psychologie," defined as " la science des ceuvres d'art en tant que 
signes." This includes three kinds of analysis: aesthetic, of the 
work; psychological, of the author; and sociological, of the au- 
thor's admirers or affinities. It is in the last division that 
Hennequin crosses swords with Taine, since the former prefers 
to study an author as a cause rather than as an effect, and since 
he distrusts Taine's " precedent conditions." But Hennequin is 
equally rigid in the application of his elaborate analysis to 
Victor Hugo. 

Hennequin was but an episode, and the mantle of scientific 

criticism really fell from the shoulders of Taine to those of 

_, _„ Brunetiere. Ferdinand Brunetiere (1849-1906), 

Brunetiere 1 . . v ' 

whose name has been so often cited m these pages, 

might be taken as an example of his own Law of the Drama — 
" the spectacle of a will, striving towards a goal and conscious 
of the means which it employs." Like a Cornelian hero he fought 
obstinately against great handicaps. A youth of delicate phy- 
sique, he failed as a Lycee teacher, failed to receive his diploma 
at the Ecole Normale — and later entered the same Ecole Nor- 
male and won his way successfully as professor. He wrote 
articles for the Revue bleue and became assistant editor of the 
Revue des deux mondes, then editor-in-chief (1893), and finally 
a member of the Academy. Then occurred his visit to America 
and his conversion to Catholicism. As in the case of Matthew 
Arnold, " literature and dogma " henceforth shared Brunetiere^ 
energies. During his whole career, he wrote at least one volume 
a year, in spite of poor health. He died, worn out by writing 
and speaking, and exhausted by the activities consequent upon 
his " dogmatisme successif." 

For like Sainte-Beuve, Brunetiere made many campaigns, 
and his battles evolved that combination of learning, conserva- 
tism and courage which make up his personality. He first 
became known for his fight against the Naturalistic school, a 



BRUNETIERE 713 

series of articles collected in Le Roman naturaliste (1883) ; much 
of his best work is contained in the Etudes critiques sur la lit- 
terature frangaise (1880-1907) ; his application of evolution to 
literature is to be found in the several works which constitute the 
Evolution des genres (especially as regards criticism, drama, 
poetry, 1890-94) ; then followed religious polemics and apologia 
for several years {Discours de combat, 1900) ; finally the incom- 
plete Histoire de la litter ature frangaise classique (1904 ff.) is 
his last will and testament, with the exception of an interesting 
volume on Honor e de Balzac (1906). 

Brunetiere is both Classicist and modern. In the former capac- 
ity, he resembles his own characterization of Boileau, as being 
As essentially a " bourgeois de Paris," brusque, frank, 

Classicist self-confident, dogmatic. The two critics have sim- 
iliar notions of literature as expressing a practical ideal of human 
life, of the race-genius and of the author's thought. Both men 
urge the supremacy of reason, both are good fighters and are ca- 
pable of strong prejudices. Brunetiere was for his generation 
the most influential judge of contemporary literature, just as 
Boileau was for the age of Louis XIV. The chief ideals of the 
latter age were those of Brunetiere: not only the standard of 
la raison, but the appeal to universality and the habit of judging 
as a moralist; his article on the essential qualities of French 
literature (quoted in the Introduction to this History) dwells 
on the Classical qualities; it is in the name of humanism that 
he combats the animal side of Naturalism, and* his love of 
Classical balance makes him the opponent of all exotic or French 
excess — Loti, the Pre-Raphaelites, Baudelaire and most 
modern poetry. Brunetiere's critical field is practically limited 
to French literature, and in that field he seems to escape with a 
sense of relief from the nineteenth century and gladly returns 
to the simplicity, order and clearness of his favorite period. The 
Histoire de la litterature frangaise classique is the monument to 
this side of the man. 

Yet in spite of himself he was a modernist in several respects. 

M - (1) His style, though to some extent archaic or 

pedantic, shows also modern preciosity, occasional 

" dislocations " in the manner of the Goncourts, and notably a 

scientific vocabulary. (2) He is accessible to the nineteenth-cen- 



714 IN CRITICISM 

tury type of French patriotism, in that he dislikes Germany and 
doubts the English influence on French literature; he prefers 
to maintain the solidarity of national thought and tradition. 
(3) Although he combated Naturalism as unideal and unsympa- 
thetic, he appreciated the broader kind of Realism, when com- 
pounded of good sense and observation. He admires George 
Eliot, Daudet and the Russians. It is significant that in the 
volume on Balzac, he recants to the extent of viewing le Na- 
turalisme as inevitable and as sociologically sound, and that here 
he places Balzac at the apex of the genre. (4) He is concerned 
with the general questions of his time, particularly those bearing 
on moral restlessness and metaphysical struggles. In his early 
colorless pessimism as in his later conversion, his development 
runs parallel to that of other thinkers in the last two decades 
of the century. (5) He adopts evolutionary criticism — that is, 
the theory that a genre is like an organism which develops. He 
states five problems with regard to genres: their independent 
existence ; their differentiation ; their stability ; the influences that 
modify them; and their transformation. The principle of (pro- 
gressive) differentiation assumes the Spencerian definition of 
evolution — the advance towards complexity from simplicity. 
The modifying influences are mainly adapted from Taine. By 
the transformation of genres Brunetiere means, for example, 
that the lyric prose of Rousseau may develop into the poetry of 
the Romantic era. This transformation proceeds according to 
the struggle for life and natural selection. Thus, in applying 
the principles of Darwin to criticism, Brunetiere forges the final 
link between nineteenth- century science and literature. In 
his illustrations of the process (Evolution de la poesie lyrique, 
Evolution de la critique), he is concerned mainly with the new 
forms in each field and omits historical transitions and con- 
siderations. The value of his theory has been much debated 
and remains debatable. The French fondness for system-making 
caused Brunetiere to turn literary genres into living organisms or 
" abstractions vegetatives, qui ont des troncs et qui poussent 
des branches " (Lemaitre) . It is evident that neither a sonnet 
nor an epic has any such organic life. Yet it is true that such 
a genre as Classic tragedy will seem to accomplish an evolution 
(cf. Brunetiere's Epoques du Theatre Frangais, 1892), because 



LANSON AND FAGUET 715 

of the perpetual changes operated on the form and the desire 
for novelty felt alike by artists and public. On the whole, 
however, it appears that Brunetiere as judicial and Classical 
critic has left a surer record than Brunetiere the evolutionist. 
We can scarcely doubt the excellent contemporary influence of 
his high standards both of ideality and of form. 

Beginning as a pupil of Brunetiere, soon appointed as head 
professor of French literature at the Sorbonne, M. Gustave 
Lanson (b. 1857) has long been the chief living au- 
thority in his chosen field. He has evolved towards 
the historical and scientific treatment of literary texts. His early 
volume on Bossuet (1890) revealed a taste that was conserva- 
tive, Classical and certainly not anti-clerical. His most im- 
portant work, the Histoire de la litterature frangaise (1894, 
and many subsequent editions) still proposes culture and the 
savoring of individual authors as the chief aims of literary 
study. But the historical approach necessarily leads a critic 
into the development of chains of ideas and chains of influence; 
and the demonstration of these things is perhaps, for the advanced 
student, the main value of M. Lanson's Histoire. The book 
abounds in thought, psychological insight, judgment and infor- 
mation. M. Lanson's method becomes more and more scientific 
in his critical editions of Voltaire's Lettres philosophiques and of 
Lamartine's Premieres meditations, in which the object is to 
surround the author exhaustively with possible influences per- 
taining to his literary environment or background. These are 
technical monuments, 1 but M. Lanson can also please and in- 
form the general reader with his studies on Corneille and Voltaire 
made for the Grands Ecrivains series. This critic does abund- 
ant justice to the eighteenth century and shows appreciation of 
contemporary currents as well (Hommes et livres, 1895). 

As Professeur d'Eloquence Frangaise at the Sorbonne, Emile 
Faguet (1847-1916) was also a critique universitaire, but his 
_ method is at once more personal and less advanced 

d'ldees: than that of M. Lanson. He has defined criticism 
Faguet as « un d on d e vivre d'une infinite de vies etran- 

geres " (cf . Sainte-Beuve and Lemaitre) , and he has carried into 

1 So is the indispensable Manuel bibliographique de la litterature frangaise 
moderne, 1909-14. 



716 IN CRITICISM 

his portraits an inexhaustible curiosity and intellectual vigor. 
His productivity was very large, exceeding forty volumes; 
in his last years he wrote too freely and too loosely. Apart 
from his feuilletons {Propos de theatre, 5 vols., 1903-10) and 
from his volumes on Nietzsche and Flaubert, the most valuable 
contributions of Faguet are his four volumes of Etudes 
litteraires — on the four great centuries, from the sixteenth to the 
nineteenth — and his Politiques et moralistes du dix-neuvieme 
siecle (3 vols. 1891-99). His studies are rather monographs on 
single authors than vues d'ensemble, and he is more of a moralist 
than a scholar. But he is thoroughgoing, independent, and very 
capable in the manipulation of ideas. He prefers to deal with 
thinkers rather than with artists; he sees little in Gautier as 
compared with Vigny, and he judges Voltaire as superficial when 
compared with Montesquieu. His lively attack on the philosophes 
{Dix-huitieme siecle: Etudes litteraires, 1890) first made his 
fame, and throughout he prefers the Classical Age for its abiding 
qualities, the nineteenth century for its " politicians and moral- 
ists." Like Diderot, Faguet combines a shrewd sense of reality 
with his penchant for ideas, and he is thereby able to avoid 
excessive " isms " and theories. His style is usually vigorous, 
witty and lucid. 

M. Paul Bourget evinces in criticism the same complex of 
forces that directed his fiction before 1890. 2 His work is a 
mosaic of influences and yet displays an individual 
pattern. The heir to Taine's determinism, to 
Renan's dilettanteism, to Stendhal's method of analysis, 
Bourget's " enquete on the moral maladies of the age " marks 
the complete penetration of psychology into criticism. The 
Essais de psychologie contemporaine (1883) and the Nouveaux 
essais (1885) reveal first the desire of the author, overwhelmed 
by his bookish upbringing, to " degager la Vie de cet amas de 
livres et d'esquisser un portrait moral de ma generation;" he 
therefore accepts Taine's principle that literature is a " living 
psychology " and he seeks to determine the soul-state not only 
of each writer but of each writer's readers, hence of a whole 
epoch; he passes in review ten modern litterateurs, all of whom 
suffer from some form of pessimism: Renan and the Goncourts 
are damaged through their dilettanteism, Stendhal and Turgenev 

2 See above, Ch. I. 



BOURGET AND SARCEY 717 

through their cosmopolitanism, Baudelaire and Dumas fils are 
affected (variously) by the perversities of modern love, while 
Flaubert, Leconte de Lisle and Taine show the corroding effects 
of science on the imagination. Other causes for gloom were the 
result of the Franco-Prussian war, the general taedium vitae and 
the conflict of democracy with culture. 

Certain of these points may be pushed too far, but Bourget's 
main conclusion — that the generation of the eighties was af- 
flicted by a deep pessimism — is borne out by the facts (see 
above, especially Bk. VIII, Ch. V). Yet this conclusion is not 
exactly a moral indictment on the part of Bourget. It is rather 
his habit to analyze writers " autant qu'ils sont des signes " 
(cf. Taine and Hennequin) of current states of sensibility. It is 
on the basis of his latter-day currency, which Bourget started, 
that Stendhal is included among the fin-de-siecle writers. A 
similar practice of applied psychology is found in the more 
scattered but excellently written collection known as Etudes et 
portraits (1888). A later collection, more polemic in tone, is the 
Pages de doctrine et de critique (1912). 

Bourget has pronounced gifts as a critic. His style, of which 
the essay on Rivarol is a capital example, still marches heavily, 
but seems more " direct and vibrant " than in his novels. He 
is both a sensitif and a thinker, able to penetrate intimately 
into his favorite writers. He has a great deal of solid knowledge 
in several fields, and he shows a corresponding profundity which 
associates historical and philosophical ideas with literature. He 
perceives, like Brunetiere, the " bankruptcy " of Science and 
takes refuge in Spencer's Unknowable, which later became for 
Bourget the domain of faith. The earlier Essais represented a 
sort of " critique confessionelle " (Giraud) , because Bourget ex- 
hibited his own psychological bias together with that of his 
generation. 

Francisque Sarcey, (1827-99), the most popular and influential 
dramatic critic of his time, was the Aristotle of the piece bien 
_ faite. His Quarante ans de theatre (8 vols. 1900-02) 

consist of critical jeuilletons, written mainly for Le 
Temps, and cover dramatic history from the ancients to the 
Theatre-Libre. Beginning with a sound knowledge and apprecia- 
tion of the French Classics, Sarcey came to prefer the drama of 



718 IN CRITICISM 

Scribe, of Dumas fits and of Sardou. This change was due partly 
to his subservience to contemporary tastes — he always held that 
a play existed only in relation to its public — and partly to his 
overweening interest in technique. For Sarcey, technique (" du 
theatre") was much more important than literary merit; there- 
fore he could set up the well-made play as a dramatic absolute. 
He insists upon the " art of preparations," the unity of impression, 
much action, and especially the scene a faire or the precept that 
the central situation of the plot must be represented on the stage. 
Apart from too much emphasis on modernity, Sarcey 's good sense, 
knowledge and insight make him an informing and often a 
reliable critic. 

Less information but a great deal of charm and personality is 
to be found in the critical writings of Anatole France. The four 
Th T volumes of La Vie litteraire (written for Le Temps, 

sionists: 1888-92) reflect the influences that characterize his 

A. France £ rg ^ p er i d (see Ch. I, above). Previously and in- 
deed throughout his career, France wrote many introductions to 
French Classics and the like, and these Notices (now collected in 
Le Genie Latin, 1913) are more of the orthodox and conventional 
kind. But his fame is closely connected with La Vie litteraire, 
which represents essentially Impressionistic criticism. " The 
good critic is he who relates the adventures of his own soul among 
masterpieces." " Objective criticism has no more existence than 
objective art." So France talks of himself in connection with 
Gaston Paris or Renan; we learn little of the Middle Ages or of 
the Hebrews, but we are entertained by the discursive, wilful, epi- 
curean charm of the irresistible Anatole. Deliberate relativity 
and dilettanteism are ever-present; yet this critic has underlying 
standards, mainly of the humanistic and classical order. A 
diatribe against Zola is followed by a plea for the cultural study 
of Latin. Maupassant is praised as a Classical Realist, and 
Florian is appreciated for his reminiscential values. Appreciative 
criticism is, indeed, chiefly in evidence, and the writer's skepti- 
cism is here not bitter but tolerant and kindly. Recognizing the 
development of the critical spirit in these latter Alexandrian 
times, France approves the genre of criticism as all-inclusive 
and as affording scope for " the rarest, the most manifold and 
varied of intellectual faculties." Certainly his own facul- 



LEMAITRE 719 

ties, enveloped in a gracious personal style and an atmosphere of 
literary vagabondage, are conspicuous in La Vie litteraire. 

" Certaine beaute," says Jules Lemaitre, " est un dissolvant." 
The phrase is significant as denoting a difference between Lemaitre 
and his brother-impressionist, France. The former, 
with all his wit and irony, shows a sturdiness and 
an intellectual consistency which the latter did not have. Jules 
Lemaitre (1853-1914) was trained as a scholar and began as a 
teacher; but he soon drifted into journalism and became known 
through his amusing feuilleton on Renan; he wrote many " Im- 
pressions " and was made an Academician in 1895 ; then he 
took the conservative (Catholic and militarist) side in the 
Dreyfus affair and returned to the usual standards in his lauding 
of public morality, patriotism and Classicism. In his last years 
he became noted as a graceful lecturer, an activity resulting in 
the popular and sympathetic volumes on Rousseau, Racine and 
Chateaubriand. 

Lemaitre's chief productions are Les Contemporains (7 vols. 
1885-99) and Impressions de Theatre (10 vols., 1888 ff.). His 
purpose is to convey appreciative and interpretative criticism, 
proceeding by " elective affinities " rather than by reasoning or 
reference to general ideas. He takes as his motto Sainte-Beuve's 
sentence comparing the critical spirit to a river which winds 
through a varied landscape and reflects everything in turn. 
Fortunately, Lemaitre's taste is good, and thereby he is saved 
from the extreme of dilettanteism. He can accept and admire, 
temporarily at least, writers as different as Racine and Verlaine, 
the Realists and Rousseau. Like Taine, he frequently sums up 
a writer in an illuminating phrase: Banville represents the tight- 
rope in poetry ; the Goncourts are the Siamese twins of literature ; 
Heredia puts the Spanish point of honor into his sonnets. 
Lemaitre writes with verve, naturalness and a wit w r hich is even 
more incisive than that of Anatole France. In his latter days he 
became less of an aesthete and more of a moralist, with " un 
grand desir de comprendre et le gout de regarder dans l'interieur 
des ames." The sincerity of this desire appears in such a volume 
as that on Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1907). All of Lemaitre is 
readable, much of him is sound, and if Impressionism is only a 
" refined appetite," yet in this case we may usually trust to the 
excellence of the palate concerned. 



EPILOGUE: PRE-WAR LITERATURE 



Much of the literature belonging to the pre-war period has 
been discussed in the preceding Book. There we dealt with the 
The elder generation of authors who attained fame be- 

Field f ore the c i ose f the century. Here it is our aim 

to treat only the talents that flowered from 1900 to 1914; and 
it is still too soon to be certain about the majority of these 
talents. It seems best, then, to discuss fully three illustrious 
representatives of the age and, as regards the remainder, to indi- 
cate the currents and ideals with which they were associated. 

The word " ideals " is used advisedly, for it seems clear that 
a certain animating force, variously directed, has usually upheld 
The this generation. To the confused abundance of 

Tendencies their production, the terms " decadence " and " fin de 
Steele " are no longer appropriate. Writers are, on the one hand 
mystic and spiritual, on the other active and patriotic. It is 
not easy to separate the tangled threads of these ideals, but 
perhaps three chief strands may be discerned. (1) The reaction 
against Naturalism and Positivism is apparent. An idealistic 
fervor finds expression in the Intuitive philosophy of M. Bergson 
and his followers, in the cultivation of the inner life by Rolland 
and others, and in the mystic or Neo-Catholic revival attempted 
by Claudel and Peguy. (2) There is the creed of energy and 
force, which inspires " the daring apostles of Life, those who 
cultivate movement and liberty rather than art " (Mme 
Duclaux). This movement is extremely diverse and often in- 
coherent. But its range is visible from the very names of such 
" petites ecoles " as Vitalism, Dynamism, Vorticism, Paroxysm, 
Futurism. These are all schools of force. Their tendencies 
are summed up in the work, of Emile Verhaeren. (3) The native 
exponents of energy, under the leadership of Barres (see Bk. IX, 
Ch. I), turned their attention to the upbuilding of France. 

720 



TENDENCIES 721 

This patriotic zeal has several phases, whether as applied to 
a depiction of the provinces (Regionalism), to a renewed in- 
terest in colonial expansion, or to the development of a solid 
Nationalism. In its extreme form, Nationalism has been linked 
with a return to Royalist and Catholic sympathies (L'Action 
jrangaise). This movement is usually active and practical. 

It seems, indeed, that the general tendency of " les jeunes " 
has been towards an obstreperous activity, towards " violence 
Conflicts anc * volume " rather than measure and taste. Never 
and has there been an epoch of greater individual 

Confusions liberty> w hether in thought or form. Adventurous 
talents have sought a cohesion or solidarity which they scarcely 
found; and in the multitude of " isms " it would appear that 
every individual is making a private school of his own. For 
instance, Marinetti (an Italian) and Verhaeren (a Fleming), 
with their interest in the inventions of a mechanical age, are 
the only "Futurists" that matter; Verhaeren, again, is the 
chief " Paroxyst " ; Jules Romains is the only luminary of 
" Unanimism," held important because of its application of 
crowd-psychology to poetry; Fernand Gregh is the apostle of 
" Humanism," which reacts against the Parnassians and the 
Symbolists ; while " Naturism " or " l'ideo-realisme " has a more 
numerous following, whose endeavor is to " faire tressaillir 
leurs strophes du grand frisson de la vie." This vehement 
struggle for individual vitality has rarely attained final or con- 
summate form. The chief organs of the new movements have 
been the Mercure de France and, more recently, the Nouvelle 
Revue Frangaise. But rather than dwell on the more eccentric 
manifestations, we should cope with the underlying philosophy 
of the age. 



II 

In the domain of thought, the transcendental philosophy of 
M. Henri Bergson (b. 1859) was very influential as it was quite 
. characteristic of the pre-war period. The rising 

generation approved his interest in the forces of 
life (Vitalism) and his advocacy of instinct rather than intelli- 
gence (Intuitionism) ; especially did his doctrine of Creative 



722 EPILOGUE: PRE-WAR LITERATURE 

Evolution and the flux harmonize with certain aesthetic tend- 
encies of the new era. Partly deriving from Boutroux and 
Renouvier, offering parallels with the system of William James, 
the Bergsonian philosophy is contained in three works of pro- 
gressive importance. In his doctoral thesis, Essai sur les donnees 
immediates de la conscience (1889), M. Bergson is already seek- 
ing the depths of the inner life and the foundations of liberty. 
In Matiere et memoir e (1896) the author discusses, with the 
latest scientific evidence, the rapports between consciousness and 
the outer world. The work is definitely idealistic and dualistic 
in its emphasis on the inertia of matter save as energized by 
spirit. Finally, 1 L' Evolution Creatrice (1907) is the fullest and 
most alluring statement of M. Bergson's metaphysical attitude. 
It deals with evolution in general, with the meaning of life, the 
relations of body and spirit, the contrast of intellect and in- 
stinct; it furnishes a criticism of modern philosophical systems 
and it garbs the whole argument in a style of infinite suggestion, 
imagery and charm. 

Although, according to his disciples, M. Bergson's work is 
strongly grounded on a manifold knowledge of the sciences, yet 
The he is throughout opposed to a wholly scientific or 

Intuition " mechanistic " view of the universe. Thereby he 
of Reality contmues the belief in the " bankruptcy of science " 
which was symptomatic of the century's end. 2 The doctrine of 
final causes, or the teleological explanation of reality, he finds 
equally man-made and unsatisfactory. Again, our philosophical 
difficulties arise partly from the inadequacy and confusion of 
terms, partly from our mental need to " juxtapose phenomena 
in space " even when ideas do not occupy space. (This parcelling 
habit is his chief objection to Spencerian evolution) . So the true 
philosopher must go beyond science, must renounce analytic 
processes in favor of spontaneous perception, and " accomplish 
an effort of direct intuition which may put him into immediate 
contact with the real" (Le Roy). The nature and functioning 
of this transcendental intuition are nowhere clearly indicated 
in VEvolution Creatrice. Having disposed of space, M. Bergson 
proceeds to dispose of time. What we usually call facts are not 

1 Hi3 latest book, L'Energie spirituelle (1919) does not fall within our scope. 
8 See above, pp. 665 and 717. 



BERGSON 723 

ultimate reality, but reality adapted to practical interests; our 
practical understanding (cf. Kant) tends to solidify the flux of 
phenomena and to represent the same in set periods of duration ; 
whereas duration likewise flows continously; in thought and in 
memory, past melts imperceptibly into present and our tomorrows 
will soon form a compact whole with our yesterdays. M. 
Bergson's illustrations of this continuum are vivid and his treat- 
ment of true duration, as being infinitely vaster than matter, is 
most impressive. 

By spontaneous and immediate intuition, then, the philosopher 
can apprehend what the scientist cannot: the real nature of the 
Creative soul, of the vital impulse (I'elan vital), of movement 

Evolution an( j change. Neo-Darwinism is acceptable as regards 
variation and adaptability. The next step is to maintain that 
these processes are not passively undergone, but reflected in our 
perception and action. Hence it is a creative evolution in which 
we participate; we are in the midst of an " unforeseeable creation 
of forms." By an act of sympathy the observer installs himself 
in the bosom of reality, in order to " sentir sa palpitation pro- 
fonde et sa richesse interieure " (Le Roy) . If we must have 
concepts, let them be plastic, fluid and living like the living 
models. So only may philosophy " dilate " and go deeper in its 
endeavor to transcend its present intellectual status. So only 
may it reflect reality's double and correlative movement towards 
unification and plurification (cf. James). Life proceeds largely 
by dissociation, and Evolution, like an exploding shell, bursts 
into ever-flying fragments. 

The best reality to study is the ego — and there is nothing 
new about that statement. But his disciples hold that M. Bergson 
The Inner has enlarged the possibilities of " know thyself " by 
World showing to what extent the division-making pro- 

cesses of the outer world have crept into the multiple ego. These 
processes, as obsessions, should be discarded, and we should, as 
in " pure memory," reach to the inner depths of the individual. 
Already, in Matiere et memoire, the writer had maintained that 
of the several grades or layers of consciousness, the deepest is 
independent of mechanistic conceptions. It would seem, then, 
that spirit may have an independent life; cerebral convolutions 
and records will not explain the original activities of perception 



724 EPILOGUE: PRE-WAR LITERATURE 

and memory. In our inner life — for example, in a deep passion 
— it is more a question of intensity than of any quantitative 
analysis. Spatial and numerical measurements must go. This 
is the doctrine of the " immanence of thought," closely connected 
with the creative and poetic instinct; this is the source of moral 
responsibility and of life itself. And in the joy of becoming one 
with pure reality, we participate in its essential movement. 

This movement is a fundamental principle of the new philos- 
ophy, for which its founder has suggested the title of the " phi- 
A Philo- losophy of change." Change or movement, says M. 
sophy of Bergson, " is original. Things are derived from move- 

ange ment." Life is a " continuity of genetic energy/' 

and our part in it is to furnish a certain push or tendency. So 
we have a moving-picture scenario in which, however, it is not a 
question of adding movement to the fixed pictures, but of starting 
with the movement and directing it into scenes or elements of 
experience. Thus we end with the idea of a reality which creates 
and which is free. The destiny of human beings has never been 
foreordained : 

The world was all before them where to choose . . . 

We often forgot our creative role and lapsed back into mechanism 
and the struggle for mere maintenance. Yet man has triumphed ; 
yet our gifts and heritage declare nature's solitary exceptional 
success. Such is the stirring conclusion of M. Bergson's 
idealistic philosophy. 

It is scarcely our part to judge this doctrine, but even a layman 
may observe that its chief assumptions repose on nothing but our 
Tendencies — or M. Bergson's — intuitive apprehension. The 
and same may be said as regards the " proof " of the 

will's freedom, of the separate existence of spirit 
and its possible immortality. Although the author scarcely 
mentions religion, there is more of revelation than of reasoning 
in his synthesis. That is why he has been criticized by such 
men as J. Benda, who find Bergson's anti-intellectualism out 
of the French tradition, sentimental and romantic with a German 
tinge. Yet the majority of young French writers in this period 
waged war, somewhat indiscriminately, on rationalism, ma- 
terialism and positivism; there was, as we have stated, a reno- 



BERGSON 725 

vation of the "ideal" in various forms; and the popularity 
of Bergson was partly due to the fact that his speculations are 
capable of many interpretations and uses. For example, Peguy 
and Claudel (see below) interpreted Creative Evolution very 
differently, the one being nearer to Vitalism, the other to In- 
tuitionism. Again, " Impulsionism," the " ideo-realiste " move- 
ment, the divagations of the later Symbolists and vers-libristes, 
all have points in common with the new philosophy, which agrees 
with the modern emphasis on force as well as on formlessness 
(the flux). It seems probable that Bergsonism, as a system, 
reached its peak before the war and is now declining. 

Whatever the fate of its message, L' Evolution Creatrice will 
remain a literary landmark because of the fascinating and poetic 
Literary power of its style. It is curious that M. Bergson 
Values should originally have renounced and finally 

adopted the use of images as symbols of the unspeakable and 
invisible; for his style is vibrant with convergent metaphors, 
evocative of a varied reality, supple and flowing in accordance 
with the thought. It is a style of elaborate harmonies, but of 
comparative clearness, containing many repetitions; it also con- 
tains, like that of Pascal, the frisson metdphysique, the sense of 
vastness and soul-yearning. In this many-textured fabric, subtle 
psychological analysis alternates with technical illustrations 
from the positive sciences. Frequent cross-references to the 
creative arts are found, and although M. Bergson has formulated 
no system of aesthetics, his influence upon recent aesthetic cur- 
rents and criticism is indisputable. 

Remy de Gourmont (1858-1915) is also a sort of Intuitionist 
with regard to aesthetic theories. Following Bergson in the 
Other " dissociation des idees," he is led by this analysis 

Thinkers - m ^ a corros i ve an( j pernicious immoralism, es- 
pecially in his poetry and fiction. His criticism (Promenades 
litteraires, 1904H3) is likewise based on a sensual principle, 
but shows genuine gifts of divination and taste. E. Seilliere as 
a critic is anti-romantic and represents an intellectual imperial- 
ism in his speculative thinking. As regards religious idealism, 
or " le Spiritualisme," E. Schure (Les Grands Inities, etc.) and 
C. de Pomairols have been considered as the semi-official heads 
respectively of the Protestant and the Catholic wings of the 



726 EPILOGUE: PRE-WAR LITERATURE 

revival. The Modernist movement, in the Catholic Church, has 
mainly a theological significance. Neo-Catholicism, in its 
more active and patriotic affiliations, was forwarded not 
only by Barres and the other " B's " (see above, p. 669), but also 
by the directors of U Action frangaise, 3 Leon Daudet and 
especially Charles Maurras. Barres and Maurras have 
been the two most effective publicists in connection with 
the maintenance of Nationalist traditions. These include, not 
only patriotism, but a return a la Chateaubriand, to the principles 
of " throne and altar." Royalism and Catholicism are considered 
as safeguarding the nation and as establishing " Tidee de 
l'ordre." Many young intellectuals and aristocrats have tried 
thus to reverse the wheel of time ; Rolland once inquired of such 
a juvenile Tory why he should cling to the skirts of his great- 
grandmother. 



Ill 

Romain Rolland (b. 1868) is the second great writer of this 
period. A native of Clamecy in Burgundy, he has celebrated 
his province in the attempted Rabelaisianism of Colas 
Breugnon (1919) and has told us of his upbring- 
ing in an episode of Jean-Christophe. Rolland was, however, 
educated in Paris, where he formed a friendship with Paul 
Claudel and an early passion for music, especially that of 
Wagner. Passing through the Ecole Normale and a period of 
adolescent storm and stress, he soon demonstrated that his dom- 
inant interest would be an intellectual internationalism and a 
desire to reach a synthesis, a world-philosophy in that direction. 
The powerful influence of Tolstoy alternated with cosmopolitan 
contacts in Rome; a visit to Bayreuth was presently followed 
by an endeavor to reform the French theater towards the stand- 
ard of Shakespeare (Theatre de la Revolution, acted 1898-1902). 
Rolland then functioned as professor of the History of Music 
at the Sorbonne (1903-10) ; he wrote a Vie de Beethoven to- 
gether with numerous studies on other musicians, past and pres- 
ent. Around 1911 he spent some time in Switzerland, to which 

3 This journal represented the continuation of the anti-Dreyfus agitation. See 
above, pp. 664. 



ROLLAND 727 

country he retired during the war. Mme Duclaux finds him more 
Swiss than Latin in his " intense individualism, his moral 
earnestness, his lyric love of nature and ... a scolding tenderness 
in his voice." 

All of this earnestness, this cosmopolitanism, this interest in 
art and in the life of the mind, was poured into Jean-Christophe, 
"Jean- which was first published periodically in Peguy's 

Christophe " Cahiers de la Quinzaine, 1904-12. This ten- volume 
work is in several respects the most notable French novel of 
our generation. First, it uses the form as a " rag-bag " mis- 
cellany and is panoramic in its view of civilization. Secondly, it 
centers around the biography of a musician and offers the most 
striking recent " case " of the artistic temperament doubling 
upon itself. In one or the other of these respects, Jean- 
Christophe has had numerous sequels in the cycle-novels of the 
last decade. 4 And thirdly, the book is written with a thorough- 
going idealism, which is not rose-colored, which faces facts and 
rings true by all standards of nobility and sincerity. 

The three divisions in the life of Christophe Krafft are his 
German youth, his Parisian struggles and the epoch of final 
tempests and subsequent serenity (Switzerland, Italy, Paris). 
Rolland's biographies of Beethoven, of Michelangelo and of 
Tolstoy, together with certain episodes in the life of Wagner, 
furnish some material in the three chief phases of the hero- 
musician. Cosmopolitanism is then evident as regards both 
places and people. The work is strongly conceived and con- 
structed; but it could scarcely maintain an equal inspiration 
throughout its whole course. Among the parts that seem most 
valuable are the following. 5 The heredity of Christopher is 
significantly set forth, and his childhood is described with charm 
{L'Aube). The awakening of young love is wonderfully por- 
trayed in the affairs with Sabine the somnolent and Ada the 
sensuous (U Adolescent) . Christopher is now becoming con- 
scious of his creative power and generally of " la force de PEtre." 
This leads (in La Revoke) to his battles with the German small- 
town atmosphere and with the sentimentalism that he calls the 
" mensonge allemand." He breaks with his early associations 

4 For example, in the works of Bennett, Mackenzie, Dreiser, Wassermann, 
Couperus, and Marcel Proust. 

5 The titles of the individual volumes are given in parentheses. 



728 EPILOGUE: PRE-WAR LITERATURE 

and suddenly flees to Paris. There, like Wagner, he meets with 
ill-luck and indifference — and Rolland writes what is really an 
indictment of the boulevards (La Foire sur la place). The 
novelist excoriates the market-place, the ignorant coteries, the 
corruptions of fast life, the hyper-feminized literature ' and 
society. He appeals from this moribund generation to the forces 
of Life, even of humble life: during an illness he is nursed by a 
servant-girl who convinces him that there are workers even in 
Paris. Then we go back to the family life of the Jeannin 
(Antoinette) , the pathetic idyll of the girl who loved Christopher 
at a distance and who in dying left her brother, Olivier, to be his 
great friend. These two friends keep house together, and grad- 
ually (Dans la Maison and Les Amies) Christopher comes to 
know a circle of quiet workers and passes through various ex- 
periences, amorous and political. The latter kind bring trouble, 
namely a riot, the death of Olivier and the forced flight of 
Christopher from Paris. Prostrated in a Swiss town (Bale), 
he recovers only to fall a victim to the most violent of his love- 
affairs, with the enigmatic and passionate Anna. Finally, he 
is restored to serenity, meets again his Grazia and loves her 
ideally (La Nouvelle Journee), shows benevolence towards the 
younger generation and passes away. "Saint Christophe a 
traverse le fleuve." 

His whole life-course, indeed, has been a " river," as Rolland 
says — not a novel but a huge stream journeying epically through 
c . . . a varied landscape, panoramic in its reflections of 

many scenes, subjects and experiences. The work also 
resembles a symphony in its triple division, its recurrent motifs, 
its anticipations and fulfillments. So diverse is the story that 
different countries have shown distinct preferences for different 
volumes — France for La Nouvelle Journee, America for Le 
Buisson ardent. So the work is uniquely European in its scope 
and influence. People of many races and types move across the 
stage, and the characterization is usually excellent. Christopher 
himself, with his naivete and blundering, his increasing spiritual 
force and his growing goodness, is wonderfully handled. He is 
a sort of Parsifal, a " reiner Thor " who becomes " wise through 
sympathy." He is a very human genius. The gentler but more 
subtle Olivier is a worthy foil. Olivier's wife, Jacqueline, in her 



HOLLAND 729 

strenuous demands upon life and love, is one kind of modern 
woman — and many kinds are represented. The heroines are 
thoroughly differentiated and analyzed. We remember the chief 
stages in the story by the names of the women, each representing 
some aspect of her country : Minne, Sabine and Ada ; Antoinette 
at the opposite pole from Colette Stevens; Grazia, the Beatrice, 
who inspires an autumnal love. Even to the minor characters, 
such as Christopher's mother, Rolland gives life and individuality. 
The art' of Jean-Christophe is in the total effect rather than in 
details. It is not written in a choice style. There are many 
passages of an eloquent earnestness, but the river runs muddily 
at times and the language becomes diffuse or slack. There are 
also slow-moving pages of discussion or didacticism. Part of 
Christopher's revolt is against too much " art," against an ever- 
refining dilettanteism ; he trusts more to the strong rough currents 
of an abiding inspiration; he trusts above all to the consoling 
power of work and of will: 

Je ne suis pas tout ce qui est (dit la voix de Dieu). Je suis la 
Vie qui combat le Neant. . . . Je suis le Feu qui brule dans la 
Nuit. . . . Je suis le combat eternel. . . . Je suis la Volonte 
libre qui lutte et brule eternellement. Lutte et brule avec moi. . . . 

This greatly resembles Bergson. The book preaches a creative 
energy derived from several sources — first, from the natural, 
hereditary and intuitive genius of the artist; secondly, from his 
" long espoir " in spiritual realities ; thirdly, from Christopher's 
enduring strength, a strength of the people, Tolstoy an, embracing 
poverty, confronting hardship — and triumphing over the market- 
place. 

In Rolland's view an artist should feel and express the " re- 
ligious conscience " of a people. So a " grand souffle Pantheiste " 
animates this work — a religious fervor without definite religious 
dogma. Hence, for all its social satire, Jean-Christophe 
is constructive through its final faith in an emergent " true 
France " and in the stamina of civilization. Lofty and 
fine issues, simply accepted, dominate the book; nothing 
could be farther from the literature of the boulevards. Nor 
does Rolland have recourse, like Barres and Bourget, to 
the traditional supports of Church and State. A greater " wind of 



730 EPILOGUE: PRE-WAR LITERATURE 

the spirit " now animates humanity, and this is also the message 
of Au-dessus de la Melee (1915), the war-book which has been so 
widely misunderstood and which, for all its true patriotism, has 
cost Rolland his popularity in France. He will regain it, for in 
the long run the judgment of France is just. The name of Rolland 
will survive this troubled epoch, steadfastly linked with the cause 
of truth-telling and of international idealism. Whatever the fate 
of his after-work, Jean-Christophe remains a noble task, nobly 
accomplished. 

In certain other novelists we find likewise an idealistic trend, 
but it has been less strongly articulate. The Regionalist move- 
Other ment launched by Barres is exemplified in the work 
Novelists f m Henri Bordeaux (La Neige sur les pas, Les 
Yeux qui s'ouvrent) , who deals mainly with the province of Le 
Dauphine; and by M. Rene Bazin, who in La Terre qui meurt 
(1899) and Le Ble qui leve (1907) presents agricultural or social 
problems in central France; Les Oberle (1901) especially gives 
M. Bazin's contribution to the literature of Alsace (cf. Barres, 
Lichtenberger, etc.). Bordeaux and Bazin are respectable and 
highly moral writers, who emphasize devotion to the family as 
well as to the state. More colorful is the depiction of North 
Africa in the work of M. Louis Bertrand: Le Sang des races, 
1899; Pepete le bien-aime, 1904. The historical past of France 
has been resuscitated in the novels of Henri de Regnier (Le bon 
Plaisir, 1902; Le Passe vivant, 1905) and in those of Maurice 
Maindron, especially Saint-Oendre (1902). These men write 
with a sensual bias, but with considerable knowledge of the past 
and much artistic skill in the presentation. The psychological 
novel is continued in La Vie secrete (1908) of E. Estaunie and 
the roman passionel in Mme Marcelle Tinayre's Maison du peche 
(1902). Yellow-back fiction has also abounded, and the confusion 
of the epoch is manifest in the heterogeneity of this form. For 
example, the Prix Goncourt has been awarded yearly to a series 
of "striking" or eccentric novels; yet none of those published 
before 1914 seem likely to survive. 



POETRY 731 



IV 



Apart from the later manifestations of Symbolism, French 
poetry seems to have been at a loss during the early years of the 
twentieth century. The period of 1900-1905 is a 
period of poetic anarchy and extravagance. After 
that date, it is held, the various " isms " settled down to a sort 
of reconciliation based on their common distrust of the intellect 
and their common desire for a poetic renaissance in the direc- 
tion of idealism, spontaneity, creative enthusiasm (cf . Bergson) . 
Their intentions were better than their achievement. In France 
proper, previous to the war, no commanding presence was felt in 
poetry. Among the conservatives, at the turn of the century, we 
find the classical and Petrarchan Muse of Auguste Angellier {A 
Uamie perdue, 1896; Dans la lumiere antique, 1905-11) and the 
emotional Vitalism of the Comtesse Mathieu de Noailles [Le 
Coeur innombrable, 1901; Les Eblouissements, 1907). Both of 
these writers are perfectly regular in form. As regards the various 
new " isms," their divisions and principles have been sufficiently 
catalogued above (section I). One might mention such mani- 
festoes as Marinetti's " Tuons le Clair de Lune " or J. Romains' 
poem, La Vie Unanime (1908). In form, the New Poetry (Paul 
Fort, Peguy, Claudel) has pushed vers libre to the point where 
it is polymorphic, closer to rhythmic prose than to verse. Like 
Verhaeren(see below), most of these writers are Whitmanesque 
p in form, content or both. Paul Fort (b. 1872), 

" prince des poetes " since 1912, has written many 
volumes of Ballades francaises, 1897-1920. These deal partly 
with the writer's self, but more with historical or contemporary 
France, in Paris or in the provinces (Le Roman de Louis XI, 
Paris sentimental, Ile-de-France) . The style ranges from the 
familiar language of the streets to a quaint archaic French ; and 
Fort uses various so-called adaptations of the Old French 
popular verse-forms. Like Jammes, he favors a nai've expres- 
sion — naivete has been a frequent pose since Verlaine. There 
is plenty of life and emotion in this diluted mixture of prose 
and verse, which is printed like prose, but allows occasional 
rime or near-rime together with repetends and refrains. Paul 



732 EPILOGUE: PRE-WAR LITERATURE 

Fort has been called " l'exemplaire le plus curieux du poete h 
la fois spontane et subtil, naturel et pittoresque, ingenieux et 
savant, opulent et neglige " (Florian-Parmentier) . 

Charles Peguy (1873-1914), a self-taught mystic and man of 
the people, was the founder (1897) of the enterprising Cahiers 
de la Quinzaine, which published Rolland, A. Suares 
and others. This poet wrote long Mysteries or 
semi-epics (Eve, Le Mystere de la Charite de Jeanne d'Arc) 
which emphasize his orthodox faith and his belief in " the 
grandeur and misery of man and his need of salvation." 
Peguy's talent is unequal, verbose, sensitive and humane. His 
rhythmical prose is full of repetitions, incoherencies and dilu- 
tions, alternating with passages of high imagery and natural 
beauty. Peguy was killed early in the Great War and is best 
known by his stirring and prophetic war-poem: 

Heureux ceux qui sont morts pour la terre charnelle, 
Mais pourvu que ce fut dans une juste guerre; 
Heureux ceux qui sont morts pour quatre coins de terre, 
Heureux ceux qui sont morts d'une mort solennelle. 

Heureux ceux qui sont morts dans les grandes batailles, 
Couches dessus le sol a la face de Dieu; 
Heureux ceux qui sont morts sur un dernier haut lieu 
Parmi tout l'appareil des grandes funerailles. . . . 

The dominating voice in poetry during this period was that 
of Emile Verhaeren (1855-1916). But Verhaeren's muse is 
Belgian rather than purely French. Born and bred 
in Flanders, he studied at Louvain and joined a 
literary group at Brussels; he published his first volume, Les 
Flamandes, in 1883. This naturalistic collection is aflame with 
the colors of Rubens and the riot of the senses. A more mystic 
and restrained note is sounded in Les Moines, 1886. Some main- 
tain that it is in the Flemish character thus to alternate the 
animal and the spiritual. At any rate, having celebrated with 
a good deal of violence the attractions of his native soil, 
Verhaeren passed through a nervous breakdown which found 
expression in such records of the inner life as Les Sairs and 
Les Debacles. He presently recovered contact with the outer 
world, married, became interested in Socialism, and began his 



VERHAEREN 733 

third phase with the publication of Les Villes tentaculaires 
(1895). 

This final phase contains the most characteristic poetry of 
Verhaeren. It is marked by objectivity, expansive power and 
Hig an interest in the manifold aspects of modern in- 

Master- dustrial life. It is distinctly a new " Futuristic " 

pieces poetry that appeared under such well-chosen titles 

as Les Forces tumultueuses (1902), La Multiple Splendeur 
(1906) and Les Rhythmes souverains (1910). In all his twenty- 
odd volumes, Verhaeren has not surpassed this trilogy. In the 
first-named, the poet sings of such " forces " as art and love, 
such heroes or types as the warrior, the monk, the orator and 
the financier. La Multiple splendeur, more abstract in its in- 
tention, bears witness to the power of ideas, of human speech 
(Le Verbe), of aspiration and even of suffering; but above all 
it revels in the vitality and violence of Nature, whether as 
triumphing in the marts of the world or as inextricably mingled, 
in the springtide, with one's personal life and with the beauty 
of women. Les Rhythmes souverains fully embodies a concep- 
tion of rhythm to which we shall return. Les Ailes rouges de 
la guerre (posthumous, 1917) contains, together with much 
powerful invective against the Germans, a large vision of the 
mighty machinery of war. 

The chief point about Verhaeren, and his chief difference 
from nineteenth-century poets, is that he accepts modern life with 
The New its grime and its glory, with all its industrial and 
Poetry c j v j c manifestations. His muse is intensely demo- 

cratic and surrenders herself to actuality. Verhaeren too has 
his Five Towns, overhung with smoke and vibrating to the new 
music of factories and trades. He perceives that " the town is 
the future." He imagines Paris or Hamburg as an octopus 
that drains the force from a whole region (Les Villes tenta- 
culaires). His pages throng with a naturalistic and teeming 
life, whether viewed in a metropolis or in the "beautes fortes et 
rudes " of his native Flanders. Verhaeren was a man of much 
travel and experience. His talent was mainly plastic and de- 
scriptive in his early volumes, but his range went ever deeper 
and wider in the new century. He declares that 

Toute la vie est dans l'essor, 



734 EPILOGUE: PRE-WAR LITERATURE 

and he believes in the elan vital as creatively as Bergson. That 
is, he projects himself and his imagination into the heart of the 
riot, and through this " immanence " he attains a kind of 
spiritual strength in the midst of materialism. Balzac had the 
same gift, and like Balzac and Hugo, Verhaeren vivifies, through 
an animistic process, everything that he touches. He also deals 
with vast and huge subjects — war and desolation, the sea and 
great cities — in the epic manner of Hugo. A fervent admirer 
of " la vie intense et rouge," he believes that the pride of life 
cannot be conquered by penitence or religion, by Magi or 
Magdalens: 

lis ne changeront rien a ce qui fut tou jours: 
L'humanite n'a soif que de son propre amour; 
Elle est rude, complexe, ardente; elle est retorse; 
La joie et la bonte sont les fleurs de sa force. 

Verhaeren's verse-forms are extremely liberal, without being 
altogether free. Parnassian in his first volumes, he later uses 
Technical the Romantic Alexandrine, then he tends more and 
Values more to discard the Alexandrine in favor of varied 

line-lengths within the strophe. This is vers libre somewhat as 
La Fontaine used it; its supple variety is not diminished by the 
continued use of rime. The rhythm, however, is exceedingly 
free and unconventional; here is his idea as to the expression 
of the " universal rhythm: " 

Tel Texprime — sait-il comment? — 

Qui sent en lui si bellement 

Passer les vivantes idees 

Avec leur pas sonore, avec leur geste clair 

Qu'elles reglent d'elles-memes l'elan du vers 

Et les jeux 

Onduleux 

De la rime assouplie ou fermement dardee. 

(Le Verbe) 

Verhaeren is fond of very short lines, alternating with longer 
ones, and thereby he gives an impression of speed and a dramatic 
effect. He inherits from the Symbolists the use of suggestion 
and of onomatopeia: 



VERHAEREN 735 

Mes jours toujours plus lourds s'en vont roulant leur cours. 

The clash of consonants and the suggestion of vowels play a 
considerable part in this poetry (see La Pluie and Le Vent). 

As poetry, his work is uniformly violent and voracious. Like 
some huge machine, it devours and gives forth again indiscrimi- 
nately " la vie ample et violente ; " it does so with 
an explosive force that is often too highly charged. 
We grow weary of hearing the siren shriek. Verhaeren not 
only makes love violently; he even takes a bath with a loud 
emphasis. The flight of Pegasus is a headlong riotous flight, 
and even Christian sacrifice appears as a " fevered violence." 
Verhaeren laps up voraciously the mixed food-stuff of life and 
therein he is like Whitman, though he is a far greater artist 
than Whitman. 6 Allowing for his coarser intoxications, it must 
be admitted that the chief trilogy of volumes analyzed above 
show powers of poetic expression unrivaled in our time. A 
large, supple and well-adapted vocabulary; a dramatic terseness 
of speech; a gift of imaginative recreation and pantheistic 
fervor; a resounding energy which often reaches poetic ecstasy 
— these things make Verhaeren a genuine lyrist, whatever we 
may think of his message and whatever doubts we may have 
regarding the " multiple splendor " that he finds in industrialism. 
Verhaeren's vogue is European in extent, and his influence has 
been felt on such movements as Futurism, " Paroxysm " and 
" Unanimism. ,, He is thoroughly representative of the New 
Poetry, in whatever country that may be taking form — and 
even where it does not take form. The following extracts (from 
Un Soir) will illustrate his creed; may a future reader know, 
says Verhaeren — 

Qu'il sache, avec quel violent elan, ma joie 

S'est, a travers les cris, les revoltes, les pleurs, 

Ruee au combat tier et male des douleurs, 

Pour en tirer V amour, comme on conquiert sa proie. 

6 The subject of Whitman in France awaits thorough investigation. It does 
not appear that Verhaeren was consciously influenced by the American poet. 
Viele-Griffin, Merrill and Claudel probably were. In all of these writers, as in 
the case of Peguy, similarities to Whitman can be found, especially as regards 
rhythm, force, externality, Modernism, the use of enumeration and repetition. 
The Leaves of Grass were first fully translated in 1909, though partial transla- 
tions had appeared from 1886 on. 



736 EPILOGUE: PRE-WAR LITERATURE 

J'aime mes yeux fievreux, ma cervelle, mes nerfs, 

Le sang dont vit mon coeur, le coeur dont vit mon torse; 

J'aime Thomme et le monde et j 'adore la force 

Que donne et prend ma force a Fhomme et l'univers. 



Une tendresse enorme emplit l'apre savoir. 



Comprenez-vous pourquoi mon vers vous interpelle? 
C'est qu'en vos temps quelqu'un d'ardent aura tire 
Du coeur de la necessite meme, le vrai, 
Bloc clair, pour y dresser l'entente universelle. 



V 

The drama is best represented by nineteenth-century writers 
(Bk. IX, Ch. II), most of whom continue into the period under 
Drama: discussion. Brieux, Hervieu, Curel, Maeterlinck, 

Bernstein Donnay and Lavedan still dominate the theater. 
Secondary to these are the twentieth- century writers, who 
express, for the most part, the tastes of the boulevards or the 
" litterature du serail " (Baldensperger) . The idealistic current 
runs thinnest in the theater, and the too-familiar triangle was not 
displaced even by the war. Probably the most notable new 
dramatist is M. Henri Bernstein (b. 1876), who perpetuates the 
tradition of the play that is ingenious, " well-made " and rather 
unreal. He usually presents triangular situations {Le Detour, 
1902 ; Le Bercail, 1904) ; his characterization is faulty, since his 
audience prefers the effects of melodrama and of long-suspended 
scenes (Le Voleur, 1906) ; he occasionally runs closer to the 
theatre d'idees, as in Israel (1908). Samson (1907) is suitably 
" strong " and gives a good portrart of the financier in his corrupt 
milieu. More is made of spiritual issues in L'Assaut (1912) and 
especially in L f Elevation (1917), one of the best plays inspired 
by the war. 

Henri Bataille (1872-1922) began with a flare of poetry which 
the market-place presently extinguished. He has been called a 
"specialist in the pathology of love " (Chandler) , and he often 
presents abnormal women (Maman Colibri, 1903; La Vierge 



THE DRAMA 737 

folle, 1910). Like Bernstein, Bataille gives a large place to 
action that proceeds from unbridled instincts and 
Minor desires. A romantic inclination is visible in Ba- 

taille, while Alfred Capus (b. 1858) has taken life 
more realistically, but easily and superficially enough, in such 
comedies as La Veine, Notre Jeunesse, Les Favorites, and nu- 
merous others. The amusing and rather scandalous vaudevilles 
of the collaborators, R. de Flers and G. de Caillavet, are at any 
rate witty and well wrought. But in none of these dramatists 
are we conscious of the richness, the turmoil and the profounder 
realities of life. 

The idealistic movement is to be found elsewhere and particu- 
larly in the mystical dramas of M. Paul Claudel (b. 1868). 
A devout Catholic, a traveler and consul of France 
in the Orient, M. Claudel has written plays as un- 
usual as his experiences. In his first collected volume {UArbre, 
1901, containing five dramas), he endeavored to infuse a mystic 
note into modern scenes and situations (as in La Jeune Fille 
Violaine and in L'Echange). Conscious of this discrepancy, 
Claudel later transposed La Jeune Fille Violaine into medieval 
terms and the result is his masterpiece, UAnnonce jaite a Marie 
(1912, 1914). This play is like a saint's life in its record of 
spiritual sweetness and martyrdom. Violaine herself, like the 
majority of Claudel's heroines, is " living and lovable." But the 
symbolism of all these dramas and the language in which they 
are written is wilfully strange and obscure. ClaudeFs medium 
is again rhythmic prose, often beautiful in its imagery and 
melody. For all his depiction of violence and pain, his " ame 
lumineuse " casts a singular glow upon his best passages and the 
high moments of his rarefied characters. 

Claudel is at once an intuitive mystic and a man of action. 
Some hold that Intuitivism, as a philosophy of ideals, demands 
. a practical outlet. The younger generation now had 

need of both qualities: the cataclysm of 1914 was 
a test alike of their faith and of their " works." We all know how 
France endured the test. The literature of the Great War and 
of the reconstruction period lies beyond our scope ; it is too soon 
to classify and judge the confusion of material. But as we close 
this long survey, we are impressed anew by three outstanding 



738 EPILOGUE: PRE-WAR LITERATURE 

and abiding features of French Literature: its high artistic 
standards; the continuity of its course or the fact that its line 
of march has been almost unbroken since the beginning; and the 
cumulative power of its traditions, effective even among the 
iconoclasts. These things have been part of the French record 
for eight hundred years and they promise well for the future. 



THE END 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

The following bibliography is strictly selective. It does not give 
critical editions of works except where they include valuable literary 
treatment; such editions can usually be found in the bibliographies to 
which we refer. As far as possible, we have been guided in our choice 
by the following considerations: 

(1) Preference is given to works in English and French; our aim 
being to include the most modern treatises and those to which our 
text is directly indebted; (2) in many cases we lighten the reader's 
task by mentioning translations of works; (3) the best all-round 
book or article on a subject is marked with an asterisk; (4) a dagger 
next to a title refers the reader for commentary to our text; (5) in 
general, we list books and articles in the order of discussion followed 
in our text; (6) where the place of publication is not mentioned, it 
is either London or Paris, according as the publication is in English 
or French; (7) we use certain obvious abbreviations (Caus. du lundi, 
Port. Htt., etc.), and " G. E. F." indicates the Grands Ecrivains jrangais 
series {Etudes biographiques et litter air es) . 

Bibliographies on French Literature: 

For the Middle Ages: *G. Paris, La Litterature jrangaise au moyen 
age, 5th edition, 1913; C. Voretzsch, Einjuhrung in das Studium der 
altfranzosischen Literatur, 2nd edition, Halle, 1913. 

For the Renaissance: H. Morf, Geschichte der jranzosischen Litera- 
tur im Zeitalter der Renaissance, 2nd edition, Strassburg, 1914; 
* G. Lanson, Manuel bibliographique de la litterature jrangaise modeme: 
I. Seizieme siecle, 2nd ed., 1911. 

For ensuing periods: *G. Lanson, Manuel, vols. II, III, IV and V 
(supplement and index) 1910-1921; H. P. Thieme, Guide biblio- 
graphique de la litterature jrancaise de 1800 a 1906, 1907; Jassy et 
Lens, Les Ressources du travail intellectuel en France, 1921. 

Lorenz et Jordell, Catalogue de la librairie jrangaise gives monthly 
subject-lists of new French books and an annual index. 

Histories of French Literature: 

* G. Lanson, f Histoire de la litterature jrangaise, 16th edition, 1921 ; 
F. Brunetiere, Manuel de Vhistoire de la litterature jrangaise, 2nd 
edition, 1899; * Suchier und Birch-Hirschfeld, Geschichte der jranzosi- 
schen Literatur von den altesten Zeiten bis zur Gegenwart, 2nd edition, 
Leipzig and Vienna, 1913; G. Saintsbury, A Short History oj French 

739 



740 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Literature 7th edition, 1917; C. H. C. Wright, A History of French 
Literature, New York, 1912; L. Petit de Julleville (editor), Histoire 
de la langue et de la litterature frangaise, des origines a 1900, 8 vols., 
1896-1899 (chapters by different authors); * Desire Nisard, f Histoire 
de la litterature frangaise, 4 vols., 1844-1861 (still the standard ex- 
position from the Classical point of veiw). 

Historic and Social Background op French Literature : 

* Histoire de France, depuis les origines jusqu'a la Revolution, 18 vols. 
(9 Tomes), edited by fE. Lavisse, 1900-1911; F. Schrader, Atlas de geo- 
graphic historique, (Hachette); L. Hourticq, Histoire de Vart {Collec- 
tion Ars Una: La France), Hachette; Kr. Nyrop, Grammaire historique 
de la langue frangaise, 3rd edition, vol. I, Copenhagen, 1914; F. Brunot, 
Histoire de la langue frangaise des origines a 1900, 5 vols., 1906-1916; 
L. E. Kastner, History of French Versification, Oxford, 1903; M. 
Grammont, * Petit traite de versification frangaise, 1908; W. C. 
Brownell, French Traits, an essay in Comparative Criticism, New 
York, 1902. 

Introductory Chapter: 

* F. Brunetiere, Le Caractcre essentiel de la litterature frangaise in his 
f Etudes critiques, 5 e serie, 1893; G. Paris, Preface to Petit de Julleville, 
vol. I; G. Lanson, Caracteres generaux de la litterature frangaise in 
the Revue des cours et conferences, XXI (1912), 5-17; M. Breal, 
Le Langage et les nationalites in the Revue des deux mondes, CVIII 
(1891), 3 e per. 

PART I, BOOK I 
Chapter I: 

G. Paris, Introduction to La Litterature frangaise; Petit de Julleville, 
vols, I and II; Lavisse, Histoire, vol. I: Ch.-V. Langlois, La Vie en 
France au moyen age, 2nd edition, 1911, and De la Connaissance de la 
nature et du monde au moyen age, 1911; H. O. Taylor, selected 
chapters from The Mediaeval Mind, 3rd edition, 2 vols., New York, 1919. 

On the chansons de geste: 

*W. P. Ker, Epic and Romance, 2nd edition, 1908; Pio Rajna, 
Le Origini delVepopea francese, Florence, 1884; *J. Bedier, Les 
Legendes epiques, 4 vols., 1908-1913; W. P. Shepard, Chansons de 
geste and the Homeric Problem in the American Journal of Philology, 
XLII (1921). 

The Chanson de Roland has been translated into English by C. b. 
Moncrieff, The Song of Roland done into English in the original measure, 
1919; and into Modern French by L. Petit de Julleville, La Chanson 
de Roland, traduction nouvelle rhythmee et assonancee, 1878; for 
analysis of the poem see Bedier, III. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 741 

On the Pelerinage de Charlemagne, see J. Coulet, Etudes sur I'ancien 
poeme frangais du Voyage de Charlemagne, Montpellier, 1907. 

On the Southern and Feudal Cycles, see Bedier I and II ; for transla- 
tion of the Girart de Roussillon, P. Meyer, G. de R., chanson de geste 
traduite pour la premiere fois, 1884; Huon de Bordeaux can be read 
either in Lord Berners' English rendering (Tudor Translations) or in 
G. Paris, Aventures merveilleuses de Huon de Bordeaux, 1899. 

Chapter II: 

On the lyric, in general: 

*A. Jeanroy, Les Origines de la poesie lyrique en France au moyen 
age, 2nd edition, 1904; G. Paris in the Melanges de litt. jr. 1912, 
p. 539; J. Bedier in the Revue des deux mondes, CXXXV (1896), 
4 e per.; F. Diez, Die Poesie der Troubadours, 2nd edition, Leipzig, 
1883; E. Faral, Les Jongleurs en France au moyen age, 1910. 

On the background of the esprit courtois: 

E. Lavisse, III, Part I; K. Norgate, England under the Angevin 
Kings, 1887; L. F. Mott, The System of Courtly Love, Boston, 1896; 
*A. Luchaire, Social France at the Time of Philip Augustus (Eng- 
lish transl.), New York, 1912. 

On the romance, in general: 

W. P. Ker, op. cit.; M. Wilmotte, Evolution du roman frangais 
aux environs de 1150 (Proceedings of the Academic royale de Belgique), 
Brussels, 1903; W. A. Nitze in Romania, XLIV. 

On the Matter of Rome: 

G. Saintsbury, The Flourishing of Romance, New York, 1897; E. 
Faral, Recherches sur les sources latines des contes et' des romans 
courtois, 1913; P. Meyer, Alexandre le Grand, 2 vols., 1886 (text ajid 
discussion) ; K. Young, Origin and Development of the Story of Troilus 
and Criseyde, Chaucer Society, 1908. 

On the Matter of Britain: 

H. Zimmer, The Irish Element in Mediaeval Culture, transl. by J. L. 
Edmands, New York and London, 1891; G. Paris, Les Romans de la 
Table Ronde in the Histoire Litteraire de la France, vol. XXX (1888); 
W. Foerster, Kristian von Troyes, Worterbuch zu seinen samtlichen 
Werken, Halle, 1914 (Introduction) ; H. Maynadier, The Arthur of the 
English Poets, Boston, 1907. 

On the Tristan: 

G. Paris, Tristan et Iseut in the Revue de Paris, 1894; J. Bedier, 
Le Roman de Tristan, 1900 (Modern French paraphrase of the story) ; 



742 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

*W. Golther, Tristan und Isolde, Leipzig, 1907; G. Schoepperle, 
Tristan and Isolt, 2 vols. Frankfort and New York, 1913. 

On Crestien de Troyes: 

Introductions to Foerster's editions of the Erec, Cliges, Lancelot and 
Yvain; G. Paris in the Melanges de litt. jr., p. 229; M. Borodine, La 
jemme et Vamour au XII e siecle d'apres les poemes de Chretien de 
Troyes, 1909. The four romances mentioned have been translated 
into Modern English by W. W. Comfort, Everyman's Library, and 
selected translations (including the Perceval) will be found in W. W. 
Newell, King Arthur and the Table Round, 2 vols., Boston and New 
York, 1898. 

On the Holy Grail: 

A. Nutt, Studies on the Legend of the Holy Grail, 1888; W. W. 
Newell, The Legend of the Holy Grail, Cambridge, U. S. A., 1902; 
W. A. Nitze in the Publications of the Modern Language Association, 
XXIV; * Jessie L. Weston, The Quest of the Holy Grail, 1913. 

The entire Perceval and the Perlesvaus were published by Ch. Potvin, 

6 vols., Mons, 1866-1871; the Metrical Joseph by F. Michel, Le Roman 
du St. Graal, Bordeaux, 1841; the Prose-Perceval by J. L. Weston, 
Legend of Sir Perceval, vol. II, 1909, and the entire Grail-Lancelot 
Cycle by 0. Sommer, The Vulgate Version of the Arthurian Romances, 

7 vols., Washington, 1909-1916. On the last, see F. Lot, Etude sur 
le Lancelot en prose, 1918. 

Sebastian Evans has translated the Perlesvaus as The High History 
of the Holy Graal, Temple Classics, 2 vols. 

The Welsh versions of Arthurian stories have been translated into 
Modern French by J. Loth, Les Mabinogion, 2nd edition, 2 vols., 1913 
(see Introduction) . 

On the romans d'aventure: 

* G. Grober, Grundriss der romanischen Philologie, vol. II : 
Franzosische Litteratur, Strassburg, 1902, pp. 523 ff.; Ch.-V. 
Langlois, La Societe francaise au XIII e siecle, d'apres dix romans 
d'aventure, 3rd edition, 1911. 

On the Chatelaine de Vergi, see Alice Kemp-Welch, The Chatelaine 
of Vergi, done into English (including an edition of the original pre- 
pared by L. Brandin), 1903. 

The Cycle of the Wager is treated by G. Paris in Romania XXXIV. 

On Marie de France: 

J. C. Fox in the English Historical Review XXV and XXVII; J. 
Bedier in the Revue des deux mondes, CVII (1891), 3 per.; K. 
Warnke, ed. Lais der Marie de France, 2nd edition, Halle, 1900 
(Introduction). 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 743 

J. L. Weston, Chief Middle English Poets, Boston, 1914, gives a 
Modern English rendering of Sir Orfeo. Andrew Lang's translation of 
Aucassin et Nicolette appeared in 1887 (Nutt) . 

Chapter III: 

On allegory, in general: 

G. Saintsbury, The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory, 
1897; W. A. Neilson, Origin and Sources of the Court of Love, in the 
Harvard Studies and Notes, Boston, 1899; Ch. Oulmont, Les Debats 
du clerc et du chevalier dans la litterature poetique du moyen age>, 
1911; E. Faral in Romania XLI. For Raoul de Houdenc, see M. 
Friedwagner, Introduction to R. von Houdenc, Samtliche Werke, 2 vols., 
Halle, 1897-1909. 

On the Romance of the Rose: 

Introduction to E. Langlois, ed. Roman de la Rose, vol. I, 1914, 
G. Lanson, Un ecrivain naturaliste du XIII e siecle (Jean de Meun) in 
Revue bleue, 1894. For Modern English verse-translation of the poem, 
F. S. Ellis, 3 vols., 1900. 

On the Roman de Renard: 

L. Sudre, Les Sources du Roman de Renard, 1893, and G. Paris in 
the Melanges de litt. fr., p. 337; *L. Foulet, Le Roman de Renard 
(these), 1914, and W. A. Nitze in Modern Language Notes, 1915. For 
Marie de France's Fables, see Introduction of the edition of Karl 
Warnke, Halle, 1898, and his Quellen des Esope der Marie de France, 
Halle, 1900. Also J. Jacobs, History of the Aesopic Fable, 1889. 

On the medieval drama: 

E. K. Chambers, The Mediaeval Stage, Oxford, 1903; L. Petit de 
Julleville, Les Mysteres, 2 vols., 1880; G. Cohen, Histoire de la mise 
en scene dans le theatre religieux frangais au moyen age, 1886; D. C. 
Stuart, The Development of Stage Decoration in the Middle Ages, 
(dissertation), New York, 1910; W. Creizenach, Geschichte des neueren 
Dramas, 2nd ed., vol. I, Halle, 1911. 

On the miracle and the jeu: 

G. Paris et U. Robert, ed. Les Miracles de Notre-Dame, 7 vols., 
1876-1883; G. R. Coffman, A New Theory concerning the Origin of the 
Miracle Play (dissertation), Menasha, 1914; O. Rohnstrom, Etude 
sur Jean Bodel, Upsala, 1900; Henry Guy, Essai sur la vie et les 
ceuvres litteraires du trouvere Adam de la Hale (these), 1898. 



744 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Chapter IV: 

On medieval historians: 

* Paris et Jeanroy, Extraits des chroniqueurs frangais, 8th edition, 
1912 (Villehardouin, Joinville, Froissart, Commines); E. Estienne, La 
vie de St. Thomas, Etude historique, litteraire et philologique, Nancy, 
1883; W. P. Ker, Froissart in Essays on Mediaeval Literature, 1905; 
for English translation of Froissart, see Lord Berners, The Chronicles 
of Froissart, ed. by W. P. Ker, 6 vols., 1901-1903; Modern English 
translations of Villehardouin and Joinville will be found in Everyman's 
Library. 

On didactic literature: 

Petit de Julleville, vol. II (article by A. Piaget) ; * Ch.-V. Langlois, 
De la Connaissance de la nature (above) ; Le Bestiaire de Philippe de 
Thaun, ed. by E. Walberg, 1900; T. Sundby, Delia vita et delle opere 
di Brunetto Latini, Italian translation by R. Renier, Florence, 1884; 
L. J. Paetow, The Battle of the Seven Arts by Henri d'Andeli, edited 
and translated, Berkeley, 1914. 

On storiology: 

*J. Bedier, Les Fabliaux, 2nd edition, 1895; G. Paris, Les Contes 
orientaux dans la litterature frangaise du moyen age in his ^Poesie 
du moyen age, II, 3rd edition, 1906. Killis Campbell, A Study of the 
Romance of the Seven Sages (dissertation), Baltimore, 1898. 



BOOK II 
Chapter I 

General aspects: 

E. Lavisse, Histoire de France, vols. Ill and IV; Helen L. Cohen, 
The Ballade, New York, 1895 (dissertation); Otto Ritter, Die 
Geschichte der franzosischen Balladenformen von ihren Anfangen bis 
zur Mitte des XV Jahrhunderts, Halle, 1914; *G. Doutrepont, La 
Litterature frangaise a la cour des dues de Bourgogne, 1909. 

On the poets: 

Introduction to E. Hoepffner, ed. (Euvres de Guillaume de Machaut, 
vol. I, 1908; the same, Eustache Deschamps, 1904; F. Koch, Leben und 
Werke der Christine de Pisan, Goslar, 1885; A. Piaget, Christine de 
Pisan et le Roman de la Rose in the Etudes romanes dediees a Gaston 
Paris, 1891; G. Joret-Desclosieres, Alain Chartier, 1897; P. Cham- 
pion, La Vie de Charles d' Orleans, 1911. 






BIBLIOGRAPHY 745 

Chapter II : 

A. 0. Norton, Mediaeval Universities, Cambridge, U. S. A., 1909; 
G. H. Luquet, Aristote et VUniversite de Paris au XI 1 1* siecle, in the 
Bibliotheque de l'Ecole des Hautes Etudes, 1904; D. H. Carnahan, The 
Ad Deum Vadit of Jean Gerson, in the University of Illinois Studies, 
Urbana, 1917; E. Bridrey, Nicole Oresme, 1906; *L. J. Paetow, The 
Arts Course at Mediaeval Universities, Champagne, 1910. 

Chapter III : 

See Book I, Chapter III; L. Petit de Julleville, Les Mysteres, 2 vols., 
1880; the same, La Comedie et les mceurs en France au moyen age, 
1886; E. Picot, Recueil general de sotties, 2 vols., 1902-1905; C 
Oulmont, Pierre Gringoire, 1911; F. E. Schneegans, ed. Maistre Pierre 
Pathelin, Strassburg, 1908; for an excellent English translation, Richard 
Holbrook, The Farce oj Master Pierre Patelin, Boston and New York, 
1905. 

Chapter IV: 

On Antoine de La Sale: 

*J. W. Soderhjelm, La Nouvelle frangaise au XV 6 siecle, 1910; J. 
Neve, Antoine de La Sale, Brussels and Paris, 1903; P. Toldo, Contri- 
buto alio studio della novella francese del XV e XVI secolo, Rome, 1895; 
G. Paris in the Journal des savants, 1895. 

On Villon: 

*G. Paris, Francois Villon (G. E. F.), 1901; P. Champion, Francois 
Villon, sa vie et son temps, 1913; Villon has been excellently translated 
into English verse by John Payne, 1878. 

On Commines: 
See the edition of the Memoires by B. de Mandrot, 1901-1903. 



PART II 
In general: 

E. Lavisse, Histoire, vol. V, Parts I and II; H. Morf, Geschkhte; 
* F. Brunetiere, Histoire de la litter ature frangaise classique, vols. I— III, 
1908-1914; A. Tilley, The Literature of the French Renaissance, 2 vols., 
Cambridge 1904; *the same, The Dawn of the French Renaissance, 
Cambridge, 1918 (treats also history and art) ; J. Burckhardt, Die 
Kultur der Renaissance in Italien, revised by Geiger, 10th edition, 
2 vols., Leipzig, 1908 (French and English translations of this); P. 
Monnier, Le Quattrocento, 2nd edition, 2 vols., 1908; * Preserved Smith, 



746 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

The Age of the Reformation, New York, 1920; Sainte-Beuve, Tableau 
historique et critique de la poesie francaise au XV I e siecle, 1828-1842; 
P. de Nolhac, Petrarque et Vhumanisme, 2nd edition, 1907; E. Picot, 
Les Frangais italianisants au XVI e siecle, 2 vols., 1906-1907; *J. E. 
Spingarn, A History of Literary Criticism in the Renaissance, 2nd 
edition, New York, 1908; C. H. C. Wright, French Classicism, Cam- 
bridge, U. S. A., 1920; J. Vianey, he Petrarquisme en France au 
XVI e siecle, 1909 (for the sonnet, as a form, p. 102 ff.). 



BOOK I 
Chapter I : 

H. Guy, Histoire de la poesie francaise au XVI e siecle, vol. I, 1910; 
the works of Morf, Brunetiere and Tilley; L. Deiaruelle, Guillaume 
Bude, 1907; H. Chamard, Les Origines de la poesie frangaise de la 
Renaissance (Boccard) ; Ph. A. Becker, Jean Lemaire, Der erste human- 
istische Dichter Frankreichs, Strassburg, 1893. 

Chapter II : 

Introductory volume to the (Euvres de Clement Marot, ed. Guiffrey, 
vol. I, 1911; O. Douen, Clement Marot et le Psautier huguenot, 2 vols., 
1878; A. Lefranc, essay on the poet's love-affair in the Grands ecrivains 
frangais de la Renaissance, 1914; C. Ruutz-Rees, Charles de Sainte- 
Marthe, traduit par M. Bonnet, 1914; R. L. Hawkins, Maistre Charles 
Fontaine, Cambridge, U. S. A., 1916; Helene Harvitt, Eustorg de 
Beaulieu, Lancaster, 1918 (reprinted from the Romanic Review, 
1914 ff.); H. Molinier, Mellin de Saint-Gelais, 1911. 

Chapter III : 

See the Revue des Etudes Rabelaisiennes, now the Revue du Seizieme 
Siecle, edited by A. Lefranc; R. Millet, Frangois Rabelais, (G. E. F.), 
1892; *A. Tilley, Frangois Rabelais (in English), Philadelphia, 1907; 
*F. Plattard, UCEuvre de Rabelais, 1910; Introduction to the (Euvres 
de Frangois Rabelais, critical edition by Lefranc and others, 1912 ff.; 
*W. F. Smith, Rabelais in his Writings, Cambridge, 1918; the best 
English translation of Rabelais is by Urquhart and Motteux, 1708 
(frequently reprinted). 

W. Walker, John Calvin, New York, 1906; H. Hauser, Etudes sur 
la Re forme frangaise, 1910; Introduction to the Institution de la Re- 
ligion chrestienne, ed. by Lefranc, Chatelain and Pannier, 2 vols., 
1912-1913. 

Chapter IV: 

W. E. H. Lecky, Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in 
Europe, New York, 1886; J. Owen, Ramus in The Skeptics of the 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 747 

French Renaissance, 1893; articles on Platonism and Marguerite de 
Navarre in A. Lefranc, Grands ecrivains francais de la Renaissance, 
1914; Mary Robinson, Marguerite of Angouleme, 1899; A. Chene- 
viere, Bonaventure des Periers, sa vie, ses poesies, 1886; W. A. R. 
Kerr, Antoine Heroet's Parfaite Amye in the Publications of the 
Modern Lang. Assoc, XX; A. Baur, Maurice Sceve et la Renaissance 
lyonnaise, 1905; J. Arnoux, Antoine Heroet, neoplatonicien et poete, 
Digne, 1913. 

BOOK II 
Chapter I : 

J. E. Spingarn, Literary Criticism, Part II; A. Rosenbauer, Die 
poetischen Theorien der Plejade nach Ronsard und Du Bellay, Leipzig, 
1895; *P. Villey, Les Sources italiennes de la Defense et Illustration, 
1908; G. Lanson, Comment Ronsard invente in the Revue univer sit aire, 
1906; C. Juge, Jacques Peletier du Mans, 1907; G. Pellissier ed. of 
Vauquelin de la Fresnaie, L'Art poetique, 1885; F. Flamini, Du role de 
Pontus de Tyard dans le Petrarquisme frangais in the Revue de la 
Renaissance, 1901. 

Chapter II : 

*J.-J. Jusserand, Pierre de Ronsard (G. E. F.), 1912; Claude Binet, 
Discours de la vie de Ronsard, ed. P. Laumonier, 1911; H. Longnon, 
Pierre de Ronsard: les Ancetres, la Jeunesse, 1912; P. de Nolhac, Le 
dernier amour de Ronsard, 1914; P. Laumonier, Ronsard, poete lyrique, 
1909 (these) ; C. H. Page, Songs and Sonnets of P. de Ronsard (verse- 
translation), Boston, 1903. 

H. Chamard, Joachim du Bellay, 1900; Walter Pater, Du Bellay in 
The Renaissance, New York, 1899. 

Auge-Chiquet, Jean- Antoine de Ba'if, 1909; A. van Bever, ed. of 
Belleau, 1909; J. Favre, Olivier de Magny, 1885 (these); G. Grente, 
Jean Bertaut, 1903; S. Rocheblave, Agrippa d'Aubigne (G. E. F.), 1910; 
G. Pellissier, La vie et les ceuvres de Du Bartas, 1882 (these); H. 
Ashton, Du Bartas en Angleterre, 1908 (these). 

Chapter III : 

*R. Sturel, Amyot traducteur des Vies Paralleles de Plutarque, 
1909; *E. Dowden, Michel de Montaigne, Philadelphia, 1905; Grace 
Norton, The Spirit of Montaigne, Boston, 1908; Paul Stapfer 
Montaigne (G. E. F,), 1895; F. Strowski, De Montaigne a Pascal, 
1907; *P. Villey, fLes Sources et revolution des Essais de Montaigne, 
2 vols., 1908; J. de Zangroniz, Montaigne, Amyot et Saliat, 1906; 
J. M. Robertson, Montaigne and Shakespeare, 1909; the Florio and the 
Cotton translations have been frequently reprinted; L. Lalanne, 
Brantome, sa vie et ses ecrits (Societe de l'Histoire de France), 
1896; P. Courteault, Blaise de Monluc, historien, 1907. 



748 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Chapter IV: 

Ch. Lenient, La Satire en France, 2 vols., 2nd edition, 1866; G. 
Wenderoth, E. Pasquiers poetische Theorien und seine Tatigkeit als 
Literarhistoriker in Vollmoller's Romanische Forschungen XIX; F. 
Giroux, La composition de la Satire Menippee, Laon, 1904; R. 
Radouant, Guillaume du Vair, Vhomme et Vorateur, 1907; P. Bonnefon, 
Pierre Charron in Montaigne et ses amis, vol. II, 1897; F. Strowski, 
Saint Francois de Sales, 1898; Due de Broglie, Malherbe (G. E. F.), 
1897; *F. Brunot, La Doctrine de Malherbe d'apres son commentaire 
sur Desportes, 1891 ; M. Souriau, La Versification de Malherbe, Poitiers, 
1912; L. Arnould, Honorat de Bueil, seigneur de Racan, 1901; J. 
Vianey, Mathurin Regnier, 1896; Mario Schiff, La Fille d' alliance de 
Montaigne, Marie de Gournay, 1910; Ch. Garrisson, Theophile et Paul 
de Viau, etude historique et litteraire, 1899. 



BOOK III 
In general: 

E. Lavisse, Histoire, V, Parts I and II; G. Hanotaux, Histoire du 
Cardinal Richelieu, 2 vols., 1893-1896; G. Boissier, UAcademie fran- 
gaise sous Vancien regime, 1909; Victor Cousin, La Societe frangaise 
d'apres le Grand Cyrus, 2 vols., 1858; Vial et Denise, I dees et doctrines 
litteraires du XVH e siecle, 1906. 

Chapter I : 

T. F. Crane, La Societe frangaise au dix-septieme siecle, 2nd ed., 
1907; E. Magne, Voiture et les annees de gloire de V Hotel de 
Rambouillet, 1912; H. Vogler, Die literargeschichtlichen Kenntnisse 
und Urteile des J-L. Guez de Balzac, 1908; Fr. Masson, Histoire de 
UAcademie jrangaise, 1913; Brunetiere, Vaugelas et la theorie de V usage 
in the Revue des deux mondes, 1901; Abbe Fabre, Jean Chapelain et 
nos deux premieres Academies, 1890. 

Chapter II : 

Gustave Reynier, Le Roman sentimental avant VAstree f 1908; *A. 
Le Breton, Le Roman au XVII* siecle; *T. F. Crane, ed. of Boileau, 
Les Heros de roman, Boston, 1902; O-C. Reure, La vie et les ceuvres 
de Honor e d'Urfe, 1910; W. Kiichler, Zu den Anjangen des psycholo- 
gischen Romans in Frankreich in Herrig's Archiv, 1909; A. Gaste, Mile 
de Scudery et le Dialogue des Heros de Roman, 1902; E. Magne, 
Scarron et son milieu, 1905; *A. Franz, Das literarische Portrait im 
Zeitalter Richelieus und Mazarins, Leipzig, 1905. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 749 

Chapter III : 

E. Faguet, La Tragedie en France au XV I e siecle, 1883; G. Lanson, 
L'Idee de la tragedie avant Jodelle in the Revue d'hist. litt., 1904; 
the same, Antoine de Montchretien et la litt. jr. au temps de Henri IV 
in Hommes et livres, 1895; *the same, Esquisse d'une histoire de la 
tragedie frangaise, New York, 1920; E. Rigal, De Jodelle a Moliere, 
1911; E. Rig^al, Alexander Hardy et le theatre francais a la fin du 
XVI* siecle, 1889 (these) ; H. C. Lancaster, The French Tragi-Comedy 
(1551-1628), Baltimore, 1907, (dissertation); J. Marsan, La Pastorale 
dramatique en France, 1905; P. Toldo, La Comedie frangaise de la 
Renaissance in the Revue dhis. litt., 1897 and 1899; E. Dannheisser, 
Studien zu Jean de Mairets Leben und Werken, Ludwigshafen, 1888; 
the same, Zur Geschichte der Einheiten in Frankreich in the Zeitschr. 
fur jranz. Sprache u. Lit. 1892; Ch. Arnaud, Etude sur la vie et les 
ceuvres de Vabbe d'Aubignac, 1887; La Memoire de Mahelot, ed. H. C. 
Lancaster, 1921 (gives stage-settings, etc). 

Chapter IV: 

* G. Lanson, Pierre CorneUle, (G. E. F.) 4th ed. 1913; E. Marti- 
nenche, La Comedia espagnole en France, 1900; E. Faguet, En lisant 
CorneUle, 1913; A. Dorchain, Pierre CorneUle, 1918; E. Picot, 
Bibliographic Cornelienne, 1876 (continued by P. Verdier and E. Pelay, 
1908); A. Gaste, La Querelle du Cid, 1899; W. A. Nitze, CorneUle 's 
Conception of Character in Modern PhUology, 1917-1918; A. Tilley, 
From Montaigne to Moliere, 1908 (contains several good chapters on 
Corneille); H. C. Lancaster, Pierre Du Ryer, Washington, 1912; A. L. 
Stiefel, various articles on Rotrou in the Zeitschr. fur franz, Spr. u. 
Lit. 1894-1906; G. Wendt, Pierre Corneille und Jean Rotrou, Leipzig, 
1910. 

Chapter V: 

A. Fouillee, Descartes (G. E. F.), 1893; G. Lanson, Hommes et livres, 
1895; *F. Brunetiere, Jansenistes et Cartesiens in the Etudes critiques, 
IV e serie; E. S. Haldane, Descartes, his Life and Times, 1905; G. J. 
Brett, The PhUosophy of Gassendi, 1908; F. Perrens, Les Libertins, 
2nd ed., 1899; H. Joly, Malebranche, 1910. 



BOOK IV 
Chapter I : 

Lavisse, I.e.; f Voltaire, Le Siecle de Louis XIV, 1740 — a con- 
venient modern edition is published by Gamier Freres; R. Doumic, 
Saint-Simon: La France de Louis XIV, 1919; * Wright, French 
Classicism, Chs. VII and VIII; F. Brunetiere, Qu'est-ce qu'un 
classiquef in his Hist, de la litt. fr. cl., vol. II. 



750 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Chapter II : 

Sainte-Beuve, Portrait de La Rochefoucauld in the Gamier publica- 
tion of the latter's works; J. Bourdeau, La Rochefoucauld (G. E. F.), 
1895; R. Grandsaigues d'Hauterive, Le Pessimisme de La Roche- 
foucauld, 1914; Sainte-Beuve, Causeries du lundi, vol. V. (on 
Retz); Mme Duclaux, Madame de Sevigne, 1914; E. Angot, Dames 
du grand siecle, 1919; Comte d'Haussonville, Madame de La Fayette 
(G. E. F.), 1891; Due de Noailles, Histoire de Mme de Maintenon, 
4 vols., 1848-1858; Saint-Rene Taillandier, Madame de Maintenon, 
1920; *G. Lanson, Choix de Lettres du XVII* siecle, 10th ed., 1913 
(introduction especially instructive). 

Chapter III : 

K. Mantzius, Moliere, les theatres, le public et les comediens de son 
temps, 1908; *E. Rigal, Moliere, 2 vols., 1908; G. Lafenestre, Moliere 
(G. E. F.), 1909; B. Matthews, Moliere, New York, 1910; *M. J. 
Wolff, Moliere, der Dichter und sein Werk, Munich, 1910; F. Brunetiere, 
La philosophic de Moliere in Etudes critiques, IV e serie; L. Moland, 
Moliere et la comedie italienne, 1867; G. Huszar, Moliere et VEspagne, 
1907; Currier and Gay, Catalogue of the Moliere Collection in the 
Harvard Library, Cambridge, U. S. A., 1906; fH. Taine, La Fontaine 
et ses fables, 1853, 3rd edition, 1861; G. Lafenestre, La Fontaine 
(G. E. F.), 1895; G. Michaut, La Fontaine, 2 vols., 1913-1914; K. 
Vossler, La Fontaine und sein Fabelwerk, Heidelberg, 1919. 

Chapter IV: 

* Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal, 5th edition, 7 vols, (with an index), 
1888-1891; E. Romanes, The Story of Port-Royal, 1907; F. Strowski, 
Pascal et son temps, 3 vols., 1907-1909; *E. Boutroux, Pascal 
(G. E. F.), 1900; * Viscount St. Cyres, Pascal, 1909 (the best account 
in English); in regard to the Pensees, see also the editions of Ha vet, 
1851, and of Brunschvicg, 1897; * J. Lemaitre, Jean Racine, 1908 (by 
far the most interesting discussion of the poet) ; G. Larroumet, Jean 
Racine (G. E. F.), 1898; F. Brunetiere in his Epoques du theatre 
frangais, 1892; P. Robert, La poetique de Racine, 1890; Dreyfus-Brisac, 
Phedre et Hippolyte ou Racine moraliste, 1903. 

Chapter V: 

A. Bourgoin, Les Maitres de la Critique au XVII e siecle, 1887; 
the same in Petit de Julleville, vol. V, ch. 3; G. Saintsbury, A History 
of Criticism, Edinburgh, 1900-1904, vol. II; *F. Brunetiere, 
UEsthetique de Boileau in Et. cr. VI e serie; G. Lanson, Boileau 
(G. E. F.), 1892; F. Brunetiere, La Philosophic de Bossuet in Et. cr. 
V e serie; A. Rebelliau, Bossuet (G. E. F.), 1900; the same, Bossuet, 
historien du protestantisme, 1909; * G. Lanson, Bossuet, 5th edition, 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 751 

1901; *E. K. Sanders, Jacques-Benigne Bossuet, 1921; F. Castets, 
Bourdaloue, la vie et la predication d'un religieux au XVII 6 siecle, 
2 vols., 1901-1904. 



PART III 

On the eighteenth century in general: 

Lanson, Histoire; Petit de Julleville, Vol. VI; Sainte-Beuve 's essays 
as indexed in the two Tables alphabetiques to his works; more par- 
ticularly, *A. Villemain, Tableau de la litterature francaise au XVIII 6 
siecle, 4 vols., 1828; H. Hettner, Liter -aturgeschichte des achtzehnten 
Jahrhunderts. Theil II: Geschichte der franzosischen Literatur, 5th 
ed., revised, Brunswick, 1894; fE. Faguet, Dix-huitieme siecle: 
Etudes litteraires, 1890 (ff.) ; J. Barni, Histoire des Idees morales et 
politiques en France au XVIII 6 siecle, 2 vols., 1865-67; E. Bersot, 
Etudes sur le XVIII e siecle, 2 vols., 1855. 

For Bibliography: Lanson, Manuel, vol. Ill; Wright, History; L. P. 
Betz, La litterature comparee, 2nd ed., Strassburg, 1904. 



BOOK I 
Chapter I : 

*H. Bigault, Histoire de la Querelle des anciens et des modernes, 
1856 and 1859; H. Gillot, La Querelle des anciens et des modernes en 
France (these), Nancy, 1914 (exhaustive as far as Perrault's Paralleles) ; 
F. Vial and L. Denise, Idees et doctrines litteraires du XVII 6 siecle, 
1906. 

On the larger question of Progress : 

* J. B. Bury, The Idea of Progress; An Inquiry into its Origin and 
Growth, 1920 (widely historical, penetrating, philosophic) ; J. Delvaille, 
Essai sur Vhistoire de VIdee de progres jusqu'a la fin du XVIII 6 siecle, 
1910 (limited to France, erudite, detailed) ; F. Brunetiere, Etudes 
critiques, V. 

Chapter II : 

*P. Morillot, La Bruyere (G. E. F.), 1904; Sainte-Beuve, Nouv. 
lundis, I and X; L. Prevost-Paradol, Etudes sur les moralistes frangais, 
6th ed., 1885. 

*G. Boissier, Saint-Simon (G. E. F.), 2nd ed., 1899; A. Le Breton, 
La Comedie humaine de Saint-Simon, 1914; Sainte-Beuve, Caus. du 
lundi, III and XV, Nouv. lundis, X; Taine, Essais de critique et 
d'histoire, 6th ed., 1892. 

J. Lemaitre, Fenelon, 1910; Paul Janet, Fenelon, (G. E. F.), 2nd ed., 



752 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

1903; H. See, Les I dees politiques de Fenelon in the Revue d'histoire 
moderne, 1899. 

Chapter III : 

E. Lavisse, Histoire de France, VIII, Part II; *C. Stryienski, he Dix- 
huitieme siecle, 1913 (short and readable) ; J. B. Perkins, France under 
Louis XV, 6th ed., 2 vols., Boston, 1897. 

On social conditions: 

*H. Taine, Les Origines de la France contemporaine. Tome I: 
L'Ancien regime, 22nd ed., 1899; V. Du Bled, La Societe frangaise du 
XVI e au XX e siecle. Vol. V: Dix-huitieme siecle, 1905; *M. Roustan, 
Les Philosophes et la societe frangaise au XVIII* siecle, (these, 1906), 
1911; E. and J. de Goncourt, La Femme au XVIII* siecle, new ed., 
1896. 

On the ladies of the salons: 

Sainte-Beuve, passim, especially Caus. du lundi, I, II, IV; Petit de 
Julleville, VI (chapter by Brunei); P.-M. Masson, Madame de Tencin, 
3rd ed., 1910; P. de Segur, Le Royaume de la rue Saint-Honore, Mme 
Geoff rin et sa fille, 1897; Introductions to Mme du Deffand's Correspon- 
dance generale (ed. Lescure, 2 vols., 1865), and her Lettres a Horace 
Walpole (ed. Mrs. Paget Toynbee, 3 vols., 1912); P. de Segur, Julie 
de Lespinasse, 6th ed., 1913. 

On science and the English influence: 

D. Mornet, Les Sciences de la Nature en France au XVIII e siecle, 
1911; *J. Texte, Jean-Jacques Rousseau et les origines du cosmo- 
politisme litter aire au XVIII* siecle, 1895 — English translation, 1899; 
R. Rosieres, Recherches sur la poesie contemporaine, 1896 (articles 
on the English and the German influences). Other bibliography on 
this subject will be found under Books III and IV, below. 



BOOK II 
Chapter I : 

*J. Delvolve, Essai sur Pierre Bayle, 1906 (exhaustive, abstruse, 
authoritative); for the general reader, *Faguet, op. cit., Sainte-Beuve, 
Port, litt., I. Brunetiere, Etudes critiques, V. P. Lenient, Etude 
sur Pierre Bayle, 1855 (still useful); for the specializing student, G. 
Lanson, Origines de Vesprit philosophique in the Revue des cours et 
conferences, 1908-10; H. E. Smith, The Literary Criticism of Pierre 
Bayle, (dissertation), Albany, 1912. 

*L. Maigron, Fontenelle, 1906; Laborde-Milaa, Fontenelle (G. E. F.), 
1905. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 753 

Chapter II : 

Villemain, Bersot, Faguet (calls Voltaire " un chaos d'idees claires ") ; 
Brunetiere, Etudes critiques, I and III, also in Etudes sur le XVIII* 
siecle, 1911 (an incomplete study, minimizes English influences); * G. 
Lanson, Voltaire (G. E. F.), 2nd ed., 1910 (multum in parvo); L. 
Crousle, La Vie et les ceuvres de Voltaire, 2 vols., 1899 (informative, 
but prejudiced against Voltaire) ; G. Desnoiresterres, Voltaire et la 
societe au dix-huitieme siecle, 8 vols., 2nd. ed., 1871-76; J. C. Collins, 
Voltaire, Montesquieu and Rousseau in England, 1908; S. G. Tallentyre, 
(pseudonym), The Life o] Voltaire, 2 vols., 1903. See also Bk. Ill, 
Ch. I and Bk. IV, Ch. II. 

Chapter III : 

L. Vian (pseudonym), Histoire de Montesquieu, 2nd ed., 1879; *A. 
Sorel, Montesquieu (G. E. F.), 1887; * J. Dedieu, Montesquieu (Grands 
Philosophes series), 1913 — also English translation; same author, 
Montesquieu et la tradition politique anglaise en France, 1909; Faguet, 
Villemain, Brunetiere (Etudes critiques, IV) ; Paul Janet, Introduction 
to school edition of the Esprit des lois, 1887; H. Barckhausen, 
Montesquieu, ses idees et ses ceuvres, d'apres les papier s de La Brede, 
1907; E. P. Dargan, The Aesthetic Doctrine of Montesquieu, its 
Application in his Writings, (dissertation), Baltimore, 1909; J. C. 
Collins (see preceding chapter). 

Chapter IV: 

Petit de Julleville, Barni, Villemain; Sainte-Beuve, Caus. du lundi, 
III (on Vauvenargues and d'Aguesseau) and XV (on St. Pierre); M. 
Paleologue, Vauvenargues (G. E. F.), 1890; Falconnet, Notice on 
dAguesseau in the latter's (Euvres, 2 vols., 1865; * A. Lombard, L'Abbe 
Du Bos, un initiateur de la pensee moderne (these), 1913. 

On St. Pierre, see Sainte-Beuve (supra), Barni, J. Fabre, Les Peres 
de la Revolution, and J. Drouet, L'Abbe de St. Pierre, Vhomme et 
Vceuvre, 1912. 

On the Memoirs, see Ch. Aubertin, UEsprit public au XVIII e siecle, 
etude sur les Memoires, 3rd ed., 1889 (our text follows his divisions) ; 
the excellent condensations of Barriere et Lescure (Bibliotheque des 
Memoires relatifs a Vhistoire de France pendant le XVIII e siecle, 
37 vols., 1846-81) have been made more valuable by the publication 
of a thorough Table alphabetique by A. Marquiset, 1913. 

On the journals, see Petit de Julleville, VI; also P. Van Tieghem, 
L'Annee litteraire comme intermediate en France des litteratures 
etrangeres, 1917, 



754 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

BOOK III 
Chapter I : 

* F. Vial and L. Denise, Idees et doctrines litteraires du XVIII e siecle, 
1909; * H. Lion, Les Tragedies et les theories dramatiques de Voltaire 
(these), 1895; E. Deschanel, Le Theatre de Voltaire, 1886 (emphasizes 
the romanesque element); F. Brunetiere, f Les Epoques du theatre 
frangais, 1892 (on Voltaire and Crebillon) ; J.-J. Jusserand, Shakespeare 
en France sous Vancien regime, 1898 — also English edition, New York, 
1899; T. R. Lounsbury, Shakespeare and Voltaire, New York, 1902; 
E. P. Dargan, Shakespeare and Ducis in Modern Philology, X, (1912). 

Chapter II : 

* C. Lenient, La Comedie au XVIII 6 siecle, 2 vols., 1888; E. Lintilhac, 
Histoire generale du theatre en France. Vol. IV: La Comedie au XVIII e 
siecle, 1909; J. Lemaitre, La Comedie apres Moliere et le theatre de 
Dancourt, 1882; (for Lesage, see next chapter); G. Larroumet, 
Marivaux, sa vie et ses ceuvres, new ed., 1894; G. Deschamps, Marivaux 
(G. E. F.), 1897; L. de Lomenie, Beaumarchais et son temps, 2 vols., 
1856; E. Lintilhac, Beaumarchais et ses ceuvres, 1887. 

G. Lanson, Nivelle de La Chaussee et la comedie larmoyante, 2nd 
ed., 1903; F. Gaiffe, Etude sur le drame en France au XVI II e siecle, 
1910 (complete list of drames). 

Chapter III : 

*A. Le Breton, Le Roman au XVIII e siecle, 1898; G. Saintsbury, A 
History of the French Novel, vol. I, 1917; L. Claretie, Lesage, romancier, 
1891 (diffuse); E. Lintilhac, Lesage (G. E. F.), 1893; (for Marivaux, 
see preceding chapter); H. Harrisse, VAbbe Prevost, Histoire de sa 
vie et de ses ceuvres, 1896 (original researches) ; V. Schroeder, Un 
Romancier frangais au XVIII e siecle. UAbbe Prevost; sa vie, ses 
romans (these), 1898 (based on preceding work, but better adapted 
to general reader); Sainte-Beuve, Port, litt., I; G. R. Havens, The 
Abbe Prevost and English Literature (Elliott Monographs), Princeton, 
1921. 

Chapter IV: 

Poitevin, ed. Petits poetes frangais depuis Malherbe jusqu'a nos jours, 
2 vols., 1864 (Anthology, with Notices); B. Jullien, Les Paradoxes 
litteraires de La Motte, 1859; P. Dupont, Houdar de la Motte, 1898; 
on minor poets, such as Chaulieu and La Fare, see Sainte-Beuve and 
Villemain, passim; *H. Potez, UElegie en France avant le romantisme, 
1898 (Parny, Bertin, etc.); L. Morel, James Thomson, sa vie et ses 
ceuvres, 1895; F. Baldensperger, Young et ses ' Nuits' en France in 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 755 

Etudes d'histoire litteraire, (first series), 1907; E. Faguet, Andre 
Chenier (G. E. F.), 1902; L. Bertrand, La Fin du classicisme et le retour 
a I'antique, 1898. 

BOOK IV 
To the general titles given for Book I, add here: 

J. Fabre, Les Peres de la Revolution; de Bayle a Condorcet, 1910; 
P. Lanfrey, L'Eglise et les philosophes au XVIII 6 siecle, 2nd ed., 1857; 
J. P. Belin, Le Mouvement philosophique de 1748 a, 1749, 2 vols., 1913; 
F. Rocquain, L'Esprit revolutionnaire avant la Revolution, 1878. 



BOOK IV 
Chapter I : 

*L. Ducros, Les Encyclopedistes, 1900; J. Morley, Diderot and the 
Encyclopaedists, new ed., 2 vols., 1897; J. Rocafort, Les Doctrines 
litteraires de V Encyclopedic ou le Romantisme des encyclopedistes, 
1890; J. Bertrand, Dalembert (G. E. F.), 1889; *L. Dimier, Buff on, 
1919; M. Flourens, Buff on. Histoire de ses travaux et de ses idees, 
2nd ed., 1850; on the later sensationalists: Levy-Bruhl, History of 
Modern Philosophy in France, Chicago, 1899; F. Picavet, Les 
Ideologues, 1891. 

Chapter II : 

* G. Pellissier, Voltaire Philosophe, 1908; J. Morley, Voltaire, new 
ed., 1903; J. F. Nourrisson, Voltaire et le Voltairianisme, 1896 (clerical 
standpoint); Sainte-Beuve, passim. E. Faguet, La Politique comparee 
de Montesquieu, Rousseau et Voltaire, 1902. See also Bk: II, Ch. II. 

Chapter III : 

*L. Ducros, Diderot, Vhomme et Vecrivain, 1894; J. Morley, op. cit., 
Ch. I, above; R. L. Cru, Diderot as a disciple of English Thought 
(dissertation), New York, 1913; E. Scherer, Diderot, 1880; J. Reinach, 
Diderot (G. E. F.), 1894; R. Hubert, La Morale de Diderot in Revue 
du XVIII e siecle, 1915-16; F. Brunetiere, Etudes critiques, II (on the 
Salons). 

BOOK V 
Chapter I : 

On Romanticism, in general: 

D. Mornet, Le Romantisme en France au XVIII e siecle, 1912; same 
author, Le Sentiment de la Nature en France de Rousseau a Bernardin 



756 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

de St. Pierre, 1907; J. Texte, op, cit. (Bk. I, Ch. Ill); M. B. Finch 
and E. A. Peers, The Origins of French Romanticism, 1920. 

*A. Chuquet, J. -J. Rousseau (G. E. F.), 5th ed., 1919; Frederika 
Macdonald, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a New Criticism, 2 vols., 1906 
(shows d'Epinay-Grimm conspiracy) ; J. Lemaitre, Jean-Jacques 
Rousseau, 1907 — also * English translation, 1907 (sympathetic and 
penetrating) ; H. Beaudouin, La Vie et les ceuvres de J. -J. Rousseau, 
2 vols., 1891; G. Gran, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (English translation)' 
N. Y., 1912. 

Special phases: Irving Babbitt, Rousseau and Romanticism, Boston, 
1919 (views Rousseauism as a moral malady; bibliography) ; E. Faguet, 
La Politique comparee, etc.; * C. E. Vaughan, ed., The Political 
Writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 2 vols., Cambridge, (England), 
1915 (a critical edition, with good introduction); E. Champion, J. -J. 
Rousseau et la Revolution frangaise, 1909; P.-M. Masson, La Religion 
de J -J. Rousseau, 3 vols., 1916. 

A. Barine (pseudonym), Bernardin de St. Pierre (G. E. F.), 1891. 

Chapter II : 

On the Revolution, see the historians discussed in Books VI and VII; 
also Carlyle; E. J. Lowell, Eve of the French Revolution, new ed., 
Boston, 1900; A. Rousse, Mirabeau (G. E. F.), 2nd ed., 1896. 

*Lady Blennerhassett, Madame de Stael. Her Friends and her 
Influence in Politics and Literature (English translation), 3 vols., 1889; 
A. Sorel, Madame de Stael (G. E. F.), 1890; * Sainte-Beuve, Portraits 
de femmes (still unsurpassed as a portrait); M. Souriau, Les Idees 
morales de Mme de Stael, 1910; F. Brunetiere, f Evolution de la 
critique and Etudes critiques, IV (on the novels); E. Faguet, Politiques 
et moralistes (see below), vol. I — also for Constant; Sainte-Beuve, 
Causeries du lundi, II (on Adolphe). 

Chapter III : 

*M. Lescure, Chateaubriand (G. E. F.), 2nd, ed., 1901; V. Giraud, 
Chateaubriand, etudes litteraires, 2nd ed., 1912, and Nouvelles etudes 
sur Chauteaubriand, 1912; f Sainte-Beuve, Chateaubriand et son 
groupe litteraire sous VEmpire, 2 vols., 1860 (revised ed., 1872); E. 
Faguet in Dix-neuvieme siecle, etudes litteraires (very laudatory). 
On Chateaubriand's American travels, see J. Bedier, Etudes critiques, 
1903; G. Chinard, UExotisme americain dans I'oeuvre de Chateau- 
briand, 1918. 

General nineteenth-century authorities: 

V. Duruy, Histoire de France, new ed., 1891 — Engl, transl., revised 
and continued to 1919, N. Y, 1920; W. S. Davis, A History of France, 
Boston, 1919 (gives much space to the 19th century) ; Ch.-V. Langlois, 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 757 

Manuel de bibliographie historique, 2 parts, 1901-04; G. Vapereau, 
Dictionnaire universe! des contemporains, 6th ed., 1893. 

Petit de Julleville, vols. VII and VIII; *G. Pellissier, Le Mouve- 
ment litteraire au XIX e siecle, 1889 (ff.) —English translation, 1897; F. 
Strowski, Tableau de la litterature jrangaise au XIX* siecle, 1912; E. 
Gilbert, Le Roman en France pendant le XI X e siecle, 5th ed., 1909; 
B. W. Wells, A Century of French Fiction, New York, 1912 (brief men- 
tion of many novels); fE. Faguet, Dix-neuvieme siecle; Etudes 
litteraires, 1887, and ^Politiques et moralistes du XIX e siecle, 3 vols., 
1891-1900; E. Hatin, Histoire politique et litteraire de la presse en 
France, 8 vols., 1859-61; H. Avenel, La Presse jrangaise depuis 1789 
jusqu'd nos jours, 1900. 

Lanson, Manuel, IV and Supplement; Thieme, Guide bibliographique ; 
G. Vicaire, Manuel de V amateur des livres au XIX e siecle, 7 vols., 
1894-1910. 



BOOK VI 
Chapter I : 

On general history, see above. — T. Gautier, Histoire du Romantisme, 
1894; L. Maigron, Le Romantisme et les mozurs, 1910; P. Lasserre, Le 
Romantisme jrangais, 2nd ed., 1908 (hostile); Lanson, Histoire; F. 
Vial and L. Denise, Idees et doctrines litteraires du XIX e siecle (to 
1850), 1918; also (for definitions) G. Michaut, in Pages de critique et 
d' histoire litteraire, 1910; and for qualities, F. Brunetiere, Nouvelles 
Questions de critique, 1890 (pp. 189 ff.). 

Special phases and influences: C. Des Granges, La Presse litteraire 
sous la Restauration, 1815-30, 1907; L. Seche, Le Cenacle de la Muse 
Frangaise, 1908; same author, Le Cenacle de Joseph Delorme, 2 vols., 
1912; J. Texte, chapter on foreign relations in Petit de Julleville, VII, 
also L'Influence allemande dans le romantisme jrangais in Etudes de 
litterature europeenne, 1898; F. Baldensperger, Goethe en France: 
etude de litterature comparee (these), 1904, also Esquisse dJune histoire 
de Shakespeare en France in Etudes d'histoire litteraire, second series, 
1912; P. Van Tieghem, Ossian en France, 2 vols., 1917; E. Esteve, 
Byron et le Romantisme jrangais (these), 1907; L. Maigron, Le Roman 
historique a Vepoque romantique: essai sur Vinjluence de Walter 
Scott, 2nd ed., 1912. 

On Nodier: *E. Montegut, Nos morts contemporains, I, 1884; Sainte- 
Beuve, Port, litt., I; L. Seche, Cenacle de Joseph Delorme; J. Retinger, 
Le Conte jantastique dans le romantisme jrangais; M. Salomon, Charles 
Nodier et le groupe romantique, 1908. 

On Beranger: Sainte-Beuve, Cans, du lundi, II and XV; E. Caro, 
Poetes et romanciers, 1888; E. Renan, in Questions contemporaines, 
1868 (hostile). 

On Lamartine: R. Doumic, Lamartine (G. E. F.), 1912; * H. R. 
Whitehouse, The Lije of Lamartine, 2 vols., Boston, 1918; L. Seche, 



758 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Etudes d'histoire romantique: Lamartine de 1816 a 1880, 1905; E. 
Deschanel, Lamartine, 2 vols., 1893; C. de Pomairols, Lamartine, 1889; 
* E. Zyromski, Lamartine, poete lyrique, 1898. 

Chapter III : 

First, the thorough-going, but rather unsympathetic series by *E. 
Bire: Victor Hugo avant 1830, 1883; Victor Hugo apres 1830, 2 vols., 
1891 (2nd ed., 1899); and Victor Hugo apres 1852, 1894; L. Mabilleau, 
Victor Hugo (G. E. F.), 3rd ed., 1902; E. Dupuy, Victor Hugo, Vhomme 
et le poete, 1893; C. Renouvier, Victor Hugo, le poete, 4th ed., 1902; 
E. Rigal, Victor Hugo, poete epique, 1900; M. Souriau, Les I dees 
morales de Victor Hugo, 1908; and see below, Chs. V and VI, also 
Bk. VIII, Ch. I (Sainte-Beuve). 

Chapter IV: 

F. Brunetiere, Evolution de la poesie lyrique en France au XIX* 
siecle, 2 vols., 1894. 

On Musset: A. Barine (pseudonym), Alfred de Musset (G. E. F.), 
1893; Sainte-Beuve, Caus. du lundi, I and XIII; L. Seche, Alfred de 
Musset, 1907. 

On Vigny: M. Paleologue, Alfred de Vigny (G. E. F.), 1891; L. 
Dorison, Alfred de Vigny, poete philosophe, 1892; F. Baldensperger, 
Alfred de Vigny, contribution a sa biographic intellectuelle, 1912. 

On Gautier: E. Richet, Theophile Gautier, Vhomme, la vie et Vceuvre, 
1893; M. Ducamp, Theophile Gautier (G. E. F.), 1890; Sainte-Beuve, 
Nouv. lundis, V and VI. 

Chapter V: 

* P. Nebout, Le Drame romantique, 1897; P. Ginisty, Le Melodrame, 
1910; on Delavigne, Sainte-Beuve, Port, contemp., V, and J. Lemaitre, 
Impressions de theatre, III; M. Souriau, La Preface de Cromwell de 
Victor Hugo (critical edition), 1897; P. and V. Glachant, Essai critique 
sur le theatre de Victor Hugo, 2 vols., 1902-03; H. Parigot, Le Drame 
d' Alexandre Dumas, 1898; L. Lafoscade, Le Theatre d' Alfred de Musset, 
1901; E. Fricke, Der Einfluss Shakespeares auf Alfred de Mussets 
Dramen, Bale, 1901; E. Sakellarides, Alfred de Vigny, auteur 
dramatique, 1902. 

Chapter VI: 

Wells, Gilbert, Maigron, etc. (see above) ; A. Le Breton, Le Roman 
jrancais au dix-neuvieme siecle avant Balzac, 1901; * J. Merlant, Le 
Roman personnel de Rousseau a Fromentin, 1905; fE. Rod, Stendhal 
(G. E. F.), 1892; A. Chuquet, Stendhal-Beyle, 1902; A. Filon, Merimee 
(G. E. F.), 1898; F. Brunetiere et ses eleves (Cavenel, Dimoff, etc.), 
Victor Hugo, 2 vols., 2nd ed., 1906; *R. L. Stevenson, Victor Hugo's 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 759 

Romances in Familiar Studies of Men and Books, 1882 f.; H. Parigot, 
Alexandre Dumas pere (G. E. F.), 1901, and Alexandre Dumas et 
Vhistoire in the Revue de Paris, 1902; R. Doumic, George Sand, dix 
conferences, 1909 (English translation, 1910); *W. Karenine, George 
Sand, sa vie et ses ceuvres, 3 vols., 1899-1912. On Vigny, Gautier 
and Hugo, see also preceding chapters. 

Chapter VII: 

On the critics: *I. Babbitt, Masters of Modern French Criticism, 
Boston, 1912; f F. Brunetiere, Evolution des genres: Evolution de la 
critique, oth ed., 1910; E. Faguet in Petit de Julleville, VII; G. 
Saintsbury, A History of Criticism and Literary Taste in Europe, 
Vol. Ill: Modern Criticism, Edinburgh, 1904; Sainte-Beuve, Caus. du 
lundi, I (Joubert, Montalembert, Lacordaire), and Port, litt., II 
(Joubert, Joseph de Maistre) ; A. Beaunier, La Jeunesse de Joseph 
Joubert, 1918 (dispels legend) ; also M. Arnold, Essays in Criticism, 
I, 1889 (Joubert), and Babbitt, op. cit.; Paul Janet, Victor Cousin et 
son oeuvre (G. E. F.), 1885; Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire, Victor Cousin, 
sa vie et sa correspondance, 3 vols., 1895. 

On the Catholic revival: * A. Guerard, French Prophets of Yesterday, 
1913; Sainte-Beuve (see preceding paragraph); on Lamennais, Sainte- 
Beuve, Port, contemp., I and Faguet, Pol. et mor., III. 

On the historians: * G. P. Gooch, History and Historians in the 
Nineteenth Century, 2nd ed., 1913 (excellent) ; * C. Jullian, Introduc- 
tion to Extraits des historiens frangais du XI X e siecle, 1897; A. 
Bardoux, Guizot, 1894; also Sainte-Beuve, Caus. du lundi, I and 
Faguet, Pol. et mor., I; F. Valentin, Augustin Thierry, 1895; also 
Faguet, Pol. et mor., Ill and E. Renan, Essais de morale et de critique, 
1859; G. Monod, Jules Michelet, 1875; Faguet, Dix-neuvieme siecle; 
J. Simon, Mignet, Michelet, Henri Martin, 1890; P.,de Remusat, 
Adolphe Thiers (G. E. F.), 1889 and Sainte-Beuve, Port, contemp, IV. 



BOOK VII 

General Authorities: 

G. Pellissier, Le Mouvement litter aire contemporain, 2nd ed., 1902; 
fF. Brunetiere, Le Roman naturaliste, 1883; David-Sauvageot, Le 
Realisme et le naturalisme, 1889; L. Desprez, VEvolution naturaliste, 
1884; fE. Zola, Les Romanciers naturalistes, 1881; fE. Scherer, 
Etudes critiques sur la litterature contemporaine, 10 vols., 1863-95; 
f J. Lemaitre, Les Contemporains, 7 vols., 1885-99; 8th vol. (posthu- 
mous), 1918. 



760 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Chapter I : 

*A. Le Breton, Balzac, Vhomme et I'ceuvre, 1905; *H. Taine, 
Balzac, in Nouveaux essais de critique et d'histoire, 1865 — also Eng- 
lish translation of the same essay by L. O'Rourke, New York, 1906; 
Sainte-Beuve, Caus. du lundi, II; + F. Brunetiere, Honore de Balzac, 
1906 — also English translation. 

Chiefly biographical: F. Lawton, Balzac, 1910; J. H. Floyd, Women 
in the Life of Balzac, New York, 1921; G. Hanotaux and G. Vicaire, 
La Jeunesse de Balzac; Balzac Imprimeur, new ed., 1922. 

Special phases: *Spoelberch de Lovenjoul, Histoire des ceuvres de 
Balzac, 1879 (3rd ed., 1888); same author, Autour de Honore de 
Balzac, 1897; M. Barriere, UCEuvre de Balzac, 1890 (useful sum- 
maries of stories); Cerfberr et Christophe, Repertoire de la Comedie 
humaine, 1887. 

Chapter II : 

* H. Parigot, Le Theatre d'hier, 1893; C. Lenient, La Comedie en 
France au XIX 6 siecle, 2 vols., 1898; +F. Sarcey, Quarante ans de 
theatre, 8 vols., 1900-02; fj. Lemaitre, Impressions de theatre, 
10 vols., 1888-98; B. Matthews, French Dramatists of the Nineteenth 
Century, 4th ed., New York, 1895; J. J. Weiss, Le Theatre et les mceurs, 
1889; *H. Gaillard de Champris, Emile Augier et la comedie sociale, 
1910; P. Morillot, Emile Augier, Grenoble, 1901; R. Doumic, De 
Scribe a Ibsen, 1893; A. Filon, De Dumas a Rostand, 1898. 

Chapter III : 

Brunetiere, Evolution de la poesie lyrique; T. Gautier, Etude sur la 
poesie frangaise, 1830-68 (publ. in Histoire du Romantisme, 1874); 
C. Mendes, Le Mouvement poetique francais de 1867 a 1900 (Rapport 
followed by Dictionnaire) , 1903. 

On Baudelaire: *C. Mauclair, Charles Baudelaire, sa vie, son art, 
sa legende, 1917; T. Gautier, Preface to the Fleurs du mal, Levy ed., 
1868 f.; C. Asselineau, Charles Baudelaire, sa vie et son ceuvre, 1879 
(partial); J. Huneker, in Egoists, New York, 1909. 

On Banville: Sainte-Beuve, Caus. du lundi, XIV, and Lemaitre, 
Contemporains, I. 

On Leconte de Lisle: Jean Dornis (pseudonym), Essai sur Leconte 
de Lisle, 1909; *G. Deschamps, La Vie et les livres, II, 1895; 
J. Vianey, Les Sources de Leconte de Lisle, Montpellier, 1907. 

On Heredia: Lemaitre, Contemporains, II; Faguet, Propos litt., 
Ill, 1905; J. Richepin in the Journal de VUniversite des Annales, II 
(April, 1908); E. Langevin, Jose-Maria de Heredia, 1907 (source- 
studies) . 

C. A. Downer, Frederic Mistral, New York, 1901. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 761 

Chapter IV: 

See above, General Authorities; Gilbert, Wells, Brunetiere; *E. 
Faguet, Flaubert, (G. E. F.), 1899 — Engl, transl., 1914; R. Dumesnil, 
Flaubert, son heredite, son milieu, sa methode, 1905; R. Descharmes, 
Flaubert, sa vie, son caractere et ses idees avant 1857 (these), 1909; 
Elliott Monographs, I-IV, Baltimore and Paris, 1914-17; L. Bertrand, 
Gustave Flaubert, 1912; Sainte-Beuve, Caus. du lundi, XIII, and 
Nouv. lundis, IV; also (on Feydeau), Caus. du lundi, XIV and XV; 
A. Riddell, Flaubert and Maupassant, a Literary Relationship (disser- 
tation), Chicago, 1920; *E. Maynial, La Vie et I'ceuvre de Guy de 
Maupassant, 1907; J. Lemaitre, Contemporaim, I. 

Chapter V: 

B. Schmidt, Le Groupe des romanciers naturalistes, Carlsruhe, 1903; 
C. Brun, Le Roman social en France au XIX e siecle, 1910. 

fE. Zola, Le Roman experimental, 1880; *E. Lepelletier, Emile 
Zola, sa vie, son oeuvre, 1909; Brunetiere, op. cit.; Scherer, Etudes 
sur la litt. contemp., VII; J. Lemaitre, Contemporains, I; f A. France, 
La Vie litteraire, I and III; H. James, Notes on Novelists, New York, 
1916 (Balzac, Flaubert, Zola). 

The Journal des Goncourt, 9 vols., 1887-96; A. Delzant, Les Gon- 
court, 1889; J. Lemaitre, Contemporains, III. 

Leon Daudet, Alphonse Daudet, 1898; Brunetiere and Schmidt; 
G. A. Ratti, Les Idees morales et litteraires d' 'Alphonse Daudet d'apres 
ses ceuvres, 1911. 



BOOK VIII 
Chapter I : 

*I. Babbitt, op. cit. and Brunetiere, Evolution de ta critique; E. 
Scherer, Etudes critiques, I, 1863; G. M. Harper, Charles- Augustin 
Sainte-Beuve, Philadelphia, 1909 (chiefly biography and portraiture) ; 
L. Seche, Sainte-Beuve, 2 vols., 1904; *G. Michaut, Sainte-Beuve avant 
les "Lundis," Paris and Fribourg, 1903 (very full up to 1850); 
L. MacClintock, Sainte-Beuve's Critical Theory and Practice after 18^9 
(dissertation), Chicago, 1920 (supplementary to the preceding); G. 
Saintsbury, op. cit. 

Chapter II: 

On St. Simon and Comte: *G. Weill, L'Ecole saint-simonienne, son 
histoire, son influence jusqu'a nos jours, 1896; Levy-Bruhl, La Philo- 
sophic d'Auguste Comte, 1900; *J. S. Mill, The Positive Philosophy 
of Auguste Comte, New York, 1887. 

On Taine: *V. Giraud, Essai sur Taine: son oeuvre, son influence, 
4th ed., 1909; same author, Maltres d 'autrefois et d'aujourd'hui, 1913 



762 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

(Sainte-Beuve, Taine, Brunetiere, etc.) ; A. Laborde-Milaa, Hippolyte 
Taine, essai d'une biographie intellectuelle, 1909; G. Monod, Renan, 
Taine, Michelet, 3rd ed., 1895. 

On Renan: * L. F. Mott, Ernest Renan, New York, 1921 (the fullest 
biography); M. J. Darmesteter (Mme Duclaux), La Vie d'Ernest 
Renan, 1898; G. Deschamps, La Vie et les livres, II, 1895; R. Allier, 
La Philosophie d'Ernest Renan, 1905; G. Paris, Penseurs et poetes, 1896. 

Chapter III : 

On Quinet; Faguet, Politiques et Moralistes, II; on the minor his- 
torians: Gooch, Jullien, etc. (see above, Bk. VI, Ch. VII); on Tocque- 
ville: Faguet, Pol. et Mor., Ill, and P. Marcel, Essai politique sur 
Alexis de Tocqueville, 1910. On Lavisse: R. Doumic, Portraits 
d'Ecrivains, II, 1909; on Quinet, the church and Veuillot: A. Guerard, 
op. cit. (Bk. VI, Ch. VII); also L. Dimier, Veuillot, 1912. 

On Amiel: Scherer, Etudes critiques, VIII, and Mrs. Humphry Ward's 
Introduction to her English translation, 1885; on Fromentin: Merlant, 
op. cit., and M. Wilmotte, Etudes critiques sur la tradition litteraire 
en France, I, 1909. 



BOOK IX 

General authorities on the fin de siecle: 

* G. Hanotaux, Histoire de la France contemporaine, 4 vols., 1903-08; 
W. S. Davis, History pf France; J. E. C. Bodley, France, 1898; 
G. Pellissier, V Affaire Dreyfus et la litterature frangaise in Etudes de 
litt. et de morale contemporaines, 1905; Mme Juliette Adam, Memoires, 
7 vols., 1902-1910. 

J. Huret, Enquete sur revolution litteraire, 1891 (interviews with 
prominent writers) ; f P. Bourget, Essais de psychologie contem- 
poraine, 2 vols., 1883; definitive edition, 2 vols., 1901; G. Pellissier, 
Le Mouvement litteraire contemporain, 1901 ; * V. Giraud, Les Maitres 
de Vheure, 2 vols., 1912-14 (Rod, Vogue, Bourget, Loti, etc.) ; Sansot- 
Orland, etc., editors, Les Celebrites d'aujourd'hui, numerous small 
volumes since 1903. 

Chapter I : 

G. Coquiot, Le vrai J-K. Huysmans, 1912; Remy de Gourmont, 
Promenades litteraires, I and III, 1904, 1909; H. Schofrler, Die Stellung 
Huysmans im franzosischen Roman (dissertation), Leipzig, 1911; Have- 
lock Ellis in Affirmations, 2nd ed., Boston, 1916 (Zola and Huysmans). 
R. P. Bowen, The Novels of Ferdinand Fabre, Boston, 1918. On the 
later Naturalists, see Wells and Gilbert; also, on the Margueritte 
brothers: R. Doumic, Etudes sur la litterature frangaise, III, 1895; on 
J.-H. Rosny: Pellissier, Nouveaux essais de litt. contemp., 1895; on 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 763 

the idealists and Bourget, see Giraud, Maitres de I'heure; on Bourget 
and Loti: R. Doumic, Portraits d'Ecrivains, II, 1909. G. Michaut, 
Anatole France, etude psychologique, 1913; L. P. Shanks, Anatole 
France, Chicago, 1919. 

Chapter II: 

*A. Benoist, Le Theatre d'aujourd'hui, 2 vols., 1911-12; *F. W. 
Chandler, The Contemporary Drama of France, Boston, 1920; A. E. 
Sorel, Essais de psychologic contemporaine; R. Doumic, Le Theatre 
nouveau, 1908 (mainly critiques of premieres) ; A. Kahn, Le Theatre 
social en France de 1870 a nos jours, (these), 1907; anon., Le Theatre 
Libre, 1900 (program and achievements of the first three years); *A. 
Thalasso, Le Theatre Libre, 1909 (fuller history and repertoire) ; W. H. 
Scheifley, Brieux and Contemporary French Society, New York, 1917; 
H. Burkhardt, Studien zu Paul Hervieu (dissertation), Zurich, 1917; R. 
Le Brun, Francois de Cur el, 1905; A. Van Bever, Maurice Maeter- 
linck, 1904; J. Haraszti, Edmond Rostand, 1913. 

Chapter III: 

*E. Zyromski, Sully Prudhomme, 1907; C. Hemon, La Philosophie 
de Sully Prudhomme, 1907; G. Paris, in Penseurs et poetes, 1896. M. 
de Lescure, Frangois Coppee, Vhomme, la vie et Vceuvre, 1889; also 
A. France, La Vie litteraire, I and III. 

C. Mendes, Rapport (see Bk. VII, Ch. Ill); *A. Barre, Le Symbo- 
lisme. Essai historique . . . suivi d'une Bibliographic, 1911 (extensive 
and authoritative) ; A. Symons, The Symbolist Movement in Litera- 
ture, revised edition, New York, 1919; Amy Lowell, Six French Poets, 
2nd ed., New York, 1916 (Verhaeren, Samain, R. de Gourmont, Regnier, 
Jammes, Fort; diffuse criticism; translations); A. Rette, Le Symbo- 
lisme, anecdotes et souvenirs, 1903; Mme Anne Osmont, -Le Mouvement 
symboliste, 1917; E. Raynaud, La Melee symboliste 1870-1890, 1918; 
T. de Visan, V Attitude du lyrisme contemporain, 1911; G. Walch, ed., 
Anthologie des poetes jrancais contemporains, 3 vols., 1919 (with 
Notices)', G. Kahn, Symbolistes et decadents, 1902. 

C. Morice, Paul Verlaine, Vhomme et Vceuvre, 1888; *E. Lepelletier, 
Paul Verlaine, sa vie, son ceuvre, 1907 — English translation, 1909. On 
Mallarme: J. Lemaitre, Contemporains, IV, and see paragraph above. 
On the Americans: T. B. Rudmose-Brown, French Literary Studies, 
1918. On Samain: L. Bocquet, Albert Samain, sa vie et son ceuvre, 
1905. On Regnier: Jean de Gourmont, Henri de Regnier et son 
oeuvre, 1908. 

Chapter IV: 

J. Bedier, Hommage a Gaston Paris, 1904; H. Behrens, Francisque 
Sarceys Theaterkritik (dissertation) Greifswald, 1911; Giraud, Maitres 
de Vheure (on Faguet, BouFg^t, Brunetiere, France, Lemaitre) ; R. 






764 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Doumic, Ecrivains d'aujourd'hui, 1894 (on Brunetiere, Bourget, Faguet, 
Lemaitre); E. Faguet, Ferdinand Brunetiere, 1911. 

EPILOGUE: 

W. L. George, France in the Twentieth Century, 1908; Le Larousse 
Jdensuel, 1910-20 (for dates and facts) ; * M. Braunschvig, Notre littera- 
ture etudiee dans les textes, Vol. II, 1921 (lists of important books, 
1850-1920), G. Casella and E. Gaubert, La nouvelle litterature, 1895- 
1905, 2nd ed., 1906; F. Baldensperger, L'Avant-guerre dans la littera- 
ture frangaise, 1900-1914, 1919; E. Henriot, A Quoi revent les jeunes 
gens, 1913 (another enquete on the various " isms ") ; Florian-Parmen- 
tier, Histoire de la litterature frangaise de 1815 a, nos jours, no date 
(1914); Mme Duclaux, Twentieth-Century French Writers, New 
York, 1920. 

On Bergson and his influence: E. Le Roy, JJne Philosophic nouvelle, 
M. Henri Bergson in the Revue des deux mondes, VII (1912) 6 e per. 
— also English translation, London and New York, 1913; H. W. Carr, 
The Philosophy of Change; a Study . . . of the Philosophy of Bergson, 
1914; G. Turquet-Milnes, Some Modern French Writers, 1921. 

On Rolland: Mme Duclaux (above); P. Seippel, Romain Rolland, 
Vhomme et Vceuvre, 1913; S. Zweig, Romain Rolland — English trans- 
lation, New York, 1921. 

On the poets and mystics : Amy Lowell and T. de Visan (see Bk. IX, 
Ch. Ill); G. Duhamel, Les Poetes et la poesie, 1912-13; same author, 
Paul Claudel, 1919; P. M. Jones, Whitman in France in Modern 
Language Review, X (1915); S. Zweig, Emile Verhaeren — English 
translation, Boston, 1914; H. Potez (on Verhaeren) in the Revue de 
Paris, 1910; Remy de Gourmont, Promenades litter aires, 5 vols., 
1904^14. 

*A. Schinz, French Literature of the Great War, New York, 1920. 



INDEX OF NAMES 



INDEX OF NAMES 

Italic figures indicate the chief references. Italicized titles are, as a 
rule, anonymous. Historical characters are usually omitted, unless they 
present literary interest. Credit for compiling this index is mainly due 
to Messrs. W. D. Trautman and Louis Allen, students in the Romance 
Department of the University of Chicago. 



Abelard, 79, 487 

About, E., 648 

Acarie, Mme, 211 

Acton, Lord, 658 

Adam, Paul, 667, 668 

Adam de la Halle, 70-71, 32, 67 

Adam, Representation de, 68-69 

Addison, 389 

Aesop, 302 

d'Aguesseau, 408, 406, 407, 451 

Aiol, 29 

Alain de Lille, 59 

Alarcon, 256 

Alary, Abbe, 410 

Alciat, 155 

Alexander, 381 

Alexandre, 38 

Alexis, Paul, 624 

Alexis, Vie de Saint, 15, 19 

Alice of Blois, 33 

Alice of France, 51 

Aliscans, 27 

Almanack de Gotha, 135 

Amadas et Idoine, 51 

Amiel, 662 

Amy, Pierre, 146 

Amyot, 193-194, 195, 224, 229, 247 

Anacreon, 176, 181, 187, 188, 208, 381 

Andreas Capellanus, 33, 55, 60 

Andrieu de la Vigne, 105, 108 

Aneau, Barthelemy, 173 

Angelique, Mere, 307 

Angellier, Auguste, 731 

Aniel, Dit dou vrai, 85 

Annius of Viterbo, 135 

Anselm of Laon, 79 

Anselm, St., 16, 268 



Antoine, Andre 681, 600, 682, 684, 

686 
Apollonius of Tyre, 53 
Arabian Nights, 85, 436 
d'Argenson, Rene-Louis, 411, 410 
Ariosto, 130, 189, 216, 237, 301 
Aristophanes, 71, 315, 693 
Aristotle, 16, 79, 98, 99, 102, 129, 

145, 161, 162, 163, 170, 172, 174, 

175, 197, 228, 248, 249, 260, 272, 

327, 342, 381, 403, 653, 717 
Arnauld, 307, 308, 309, 325, 346 
Arnold, Matthew, 576, 642, 644, 645, 

712 
Arouet, see Voltaire 
d'Aubignac, Abbe, 249, 253, 316, 321 
d'Aubigne, 176, 182, 183, 190, 191, 

192, 568 
d'Aubray, Claude, 209 
Aucassin et Nicolette, 53-54, 15, 73 
Augier, Emile, 595-597, 426, 562, 

600, 601, 613, 661, 680 
Augustine, St., 18, 68, 128, 158, 306, 

339, 484 
Aurelius, Marcus, 653 
Ausonius, 180 

Autels, Guillaume des, 175, 176 
Avianus, 64 

Babbitt, Irving, 541 

Bachaumont, 412 

Bacon, Francis, 202, 339, 453, 454, 

455, 476 
Bacon, Roger, 62, 103 
Baif, Antoine de, 175, 176, 178, 187, 

244 
Baif, Lazare de, 178, 239 



767 



768 



INDEX 



Baldensperger, 736 

Balzac, Honore de, 685-694, 280, 
412, 426, 482, 519, 524, 566, 568, 
570, 571, 575, 598, 613, 616, 618, 
623, 625, 626, 629, 651, 666, 667, 
680, 682, 684, 705, 714, 734 

Balzac, Jean-Louis Guez de, 224-225, 
198, 212, 222, 235, 258, 268 

Balzac, Laure (Mme de Surville), 
585 

Banville, 543, 605, 688, 691, 719 

Baour-Lormian, 520 

Barante, 525 

Barat et Hairnet, 84 

Barbey d'Aurevilly, 573, 577 

Barlaam et Josaphat, 86-86 

Baro, 230, 351 

Baron, 351, 436 

Barre, A., 702 

Barres, Maurice, 672-673, 656, 668, 
669, 720, 726, 729, 730 

Bartas, Du, 190-191, 176 

Bataille des sept arts, see Henri 
d'Andeli 

Bataille,' Henri, 786-737 

Baudelaire, 602-605, 551, 700, 701, 
705, 713, 717 

Bayle, 373-378, 270, 286, 381, 382, 
396, 408, 412, 413, 453, 456, 457, 
465, 468, 639 

Bazin, Rene, 730 

Beaumarchais, 429-430, 363, 424, 427, 
432, 680 

Becque, Henry, 600-601, 681, 684 

Bede, 80 

Bedel, Jean, 84 

Bedier, Joseph, 43, 84 

Beethoven, 727 

Belasco, 679 

Bellay, Guillaume du, 149 

Bellay, Joachim du, 171-173 (De- 
fense), 184-187 (Life and Poetry), 
107, 134, 135, 163, 168, 169, 170, 
174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 180, 183, 
192, 195, 277, 339, 639 

Belleau, Remy, 175, 176, 178, 183, 
187 

Benda, J., 724 

Bennett, Arnold, 727 (note) 

Benoit de Sainte-More, 89-40, 73 

Benserade, 226 

Beranger, 528-529 



Bercuire, Pierre, 98-99, 88 

Bergson, Henri, 721-725, 720, 729, 
731, 734 

Bernard, Claude, 625, 645 

Bernard, Gentil, 446 

Bernard, St., 100 

Bernart de Ventadorn, 33 

Bernhardt, Sarah, 631, 679 

Berny, Mme de, 585, 586 

Bernstein Henri, 736, 6, 737 

Beroul, 42, 43 

Bertaut, 188, 189 

Berthelot, 652 

Bertin, 445, 447, 448 

Bertran de Born, 33 

Bertrand, Louis, 730 

Beyle, 565, see Stendhal 

Bible, 16, 158, 376, 468, 469, 531, 548, 
577, 653 

Bien avise, mal avise, 111 

Binet, 175 

Boccaccio, 40, 85, 88, 89, 94, 118, 
128, 137, 165, 167, 247, 301 

Bodel, Jean, 69, 120 

Bodin, Jean, 209 

Boethius, 62, 79, 93 

Boetie, Etienne de la, 195, 196, 
199 

Boex, J.-H. and S.-J., 668 (see 
Rosny, J.-H.) 

Boileau, 323-830, 2, 171, 188, 191, 
213, 215, 216, 218, 228, 234, 235, 
250, 258, 276, 277, 279, 281, 291, 
294, 297, 301, 302, 313, 314, 318, 
319, 321, 339, 340, 341, 342, 343, 
344, 346, 347, 350, 415, 513, 518, 
639, 641, 713 

Boisrobert, 226 

Bolingbroke, 371, 384, 410, 465 

Bonaventure, St., 100 

Bonnard, 447 

Bordeaux, Henri, 730 

Bordeors, Les deux, 84 

Borderie, de la, 143 

Bornier, Henri de, 688 

Borstel, Sieur de Gaubertin, 230 

Bossuet, 880-836, 98, 101, 159, 160, 
212, 225, 258, 276, 279, 283, 295, 
347, 357, 392, 393, 400, 408, 457, 
513, 579 

Boucher, 479 

Bouhours, Abbe, 281, 340 (note) 



INDEX 



769 



Bouilhet, Louis, 614 
Boulay-Paty, 523 
Bourdaloue, 212, 335, 408 
Bourdeille, Pierre de, see Brantome 
Bourget, Paul, 610-612 (Fiction), 

716-717 (Criticism), 566, 623, 656, 

665, 669, 729 
Boursault, 253 
Boutroux, 722 
Brantome, 204-206, 193 
Brer Rabbit Collections, 65 
Brieux, Eugene, 681-683, 684, 736 
Brownell, W. C, 4, 640, 651 
Browning, Robert, 705 
Brunetiere, 712-715, m, 135, 152, 

160, 166, 168, 214, 215, 258, 278, 

330, 340, 454, 501, 633, 634, 665, 

669, 670, 717 
Brunetto Latini, 81, 78, 94 
Buchanan, 196 
Buckle, 401, 403 
Bude, 130, 131, 146, 153, 161 
Bueil, Honorat de, see Racan 
Burton, Comte de, 459-461, 8, 370, 

452, 455, 497 
Bunyan, John, 63 
Bussy-Rabutin, 205, 286, 289, 340 

(note) 
Byron, 523-524, 498, 505, 515, 520, 

537, 544, 546, 548, 559, 561, 565 

Caillavet G. de, 737 

Calas, 464 

Callisthenes, 38 

Calvin, 154-160, 130, 132, 145, 153, 

165, 193, 195, 200, 203, 204, 263, 

306 
Campistron, 322, 418 
Capus, Alfred, 737 
Carlyle, 10, 392, 406, 583 
Carmen de proditione Guenonis, 20 
Castelvetro, 174, 228, 248, 249 
Castiglione, 129, 131 
Castro, Guillen de, 255 
Catherine the Great, 473 
Ceard, 624, 681 
Celestina, 137 
Cent Nouvelles nouvelles, 86, 115, 

117, 118 
Cervantes, 5, 50, 229, 247 
Chambers, 371, 451 
Champfleury, 613 



Chancel, 322 

Chancun de Guillelme, 27 
Chandler, F. W., 687, 736 
Chanson d'Antioche, 19 
Chanson de Jerusalem, 19 
Chanson de Roland, 20-25, 26, 27 
Chapelain, 228, 183, 215, 222, 223, 

227, 234, 247, 248, 249, 252, 288, 326 
Chardin, 397, 479 
Charlemagne, 13, 19, 20, 25 
Charles of Anjou, 71 
Charles V, 89, 99 
Charles d'Orleans, 95-97, 91, 118 
Charles, Mme Julie, 530 
Charron, 197, 210, 271 
Chartier, Alain, 93-95, 81, 91, 166 
Chastiement d'un pere a son fits, 81 
Chateaubriand, 507-516, 8, 341, 416, 

493, 497, 503, 505, 517, 518, 521, 

523, 525, 528, 534, 541, 564, 567, 

576, 577, 580, 615, 618, 636, 638, 

640, 641, 674, 719 
Chatelain de Coucy, 35 
Chdtelain de Coucy, 51, 53 
Chatelaine de Vergy, 51 
Chatelet, Mme du, 370, 385, 386, 389 
Chatterton, 447, 562 
Chaucer, 2, 15, 40, 62, 63, 76, 85, 89, 

91, 651 
Chaulieu, 445 
ChenedoUe, 520 

Chenier, Andre, 448-450, 6, 444, 447 
Chenier, M.-J., 423, 448 
Chesterfield, Lord, 368 
Chevalier as deus espees, 50 
Chevalier au cygne, 19 
Chinard, G., 510 
Chrestien, Florent, 209 
Christine de Pisan, 92-93, 63, 91, 98, 

100, 101 
Cicero, 55, 60, 94, 100, 102, 150, 163, 

199, 200 
Clairon, Mile, 368, 463. 464 
Claudel, Paul, 737, 706, 720, 725, 726, 

731, 735 (note) 
Col, Pierre, 101 
Colardeau, 446 

Colin d'Auxerre, 131, 144, 193 
Colin Muset, 36 
Collins, Anthony, 371 
Commines, Phillippe de, 121-124, 

113, 114 



770 



INDEX 



Comte, Auguste, 645-648, 455, 649, 

653, 654 
Comte de Poitiers, 51 
Concilium Amoris, 54 
Conde, the Grand, 220, 234, 331, 349, 

351 
Condillac, 461 
Condorcet, Marquis de, 462 
Conon de Bethune, 34 
Conrart, 226 
Constant, Benjamin, 505-506, 497, 

498, 522 
Cop, Nicolas, 155, 156 
Copernicus, 382 
Coppe, Frangois, 679-698, 605, 669, 

688, 695 
Coquelin, Constant, 693 
Corbiere, 703 
Cordier, 154 
Corneille, Pierre, 251-262, 165, 194, 

212, 222, 225, 228, 233, 235, 238, 

241, 247, 248, 249, 265, 280, 286, 

299, 314. 315, 316, 321, 322, 339. 

359, 378, 379, 416, 421, 553, 554 
Corneille, Thomas, 254, 314, 322, 340 

(note), 378, 379 
Cortegiano, 11, see Castiglione 
Costanzo, Angelo di, 189 
Cotton, 202 
Coulanges, see Fustel 
Couperus, 727 (note) 
Courbet, 613 

C ouronnement de Louis, 26 
Couronnement de Renard, 66 
Cousin, Victor, 578-579, 235, 504, 

505, 521 (note) 
Crebillon pere, 421-422, 387, 418, 

420, 464 
Crestien de Troyes, 43-60, 15, 33, 

42, 51, 52 
Cretin, 133, 134, 137 
Cry de la Basoche, 109 
Curel, Francois de, 686-687, 681, 688, 

736 
Cuvier, 460 

Dacier, Mme, 340 

Dalembert, 453-455, 369, 370, 451, 

452, 464, 473, 476 
Damigeron, 80 
Dancourt, 425 
Dangeau, 354 



Daniel, 189 

Daniello, 185 

Dante, 5, 34, 46, 55, 62, 78, 81, 93, 

94, 128, 166, 170, 192, 513, 541, 

588, 680 
Danton, 652 
Dares Phrygius, 37, 39 
Darwin, 608, 645, 657, 714 
Daudet, Alphonse, 629-633, 627, 698, 

714 
Daudet, Leon, 726 
Daunou, 635 
Daurat, 175, 178 
Debat de Vhiver et de Vete, 83 
Deffand, Mme du, 366, 368, 369 
Delacroix, E., 520, 524, 604 
Delavigne, Casimir, 524, 554, 559 
Delille, Abbe, 446 
Delorme, Joseph, see Sainte-Beuve 
De Phyllide et Flora, 55 
De Quincey, 347 
Desaugiers, 528 
Descartes, 263-272, 3, 10, 16, 79, 

103, 163, 228, 307, 308, 310, 335, 

339, 340, 343, 345, 375, 381, 402, 

466, 467, 578, 646, 670 
Deschamps, Emile, 519, 520 
Deschamps, see Eustache 
Desfontaines, 386 
Desjardins, 519 
Desmarets, see Saint-Sorlin 
Desmasures, Louis, 241 
Desmoulins, Camille, 496 
Desperiers, Bonaventure, 167, 139 
Desportes, Philippe, 176, 184, 188, 

189, 213, 214, 215, 216, 217 
Despreaux, see Boileau 
Destouches, Nericault, 426 
Destruction de Troie la grant, 108 
Destutt de Tracy, see Tracy 
Dickens, 2, 325, 370, 435, 437, 570, 

581, 632, 651 
Dictys Cretensis, 37, 39 
Diderot, 432 (Theories of), 473-482 

(Life and Works), 369, 370, 371, 

378, 412, 434 (note), 443, 451, 452, 

453, 455, 456, 458, 461, 464, 484, 

490, 555, 576, 646, 716 
Dierx, Leon, 702 (note), 706 
Dies Irae, 58 
Diodorus, 194 
Dit de la Rose, 55 



INDEX 



771 



Dit dou vrai aniel, 85 

Dobson, Austin, 36, 552 

Doette, La belle, 31 

Dolet, 132, 149, 161, 339 

Donnay, Maurice, 687, 736 

Dorat, 445, 446 

Dorval, Mme, 547 

Doumic, 667 

Dowden, 196, 285, 635 

Dreiser, 727 (note) 

Dreyfus, 624, 664, 671, 676, 719 

Dubois, Cardinal, 354 

Dubois, Paul-Francois, 521 

Du Bos, Abbe, 408-409 

Du Camp, 614 

Ducis, Jean-Frangois, 422, 553, 562 

Duclaux, Mme, 720, 727 

Duclos, Charles, 413 

Ducros, L., 459 

Dudevant, Baron, 573, 574 

Dufresny, 435 

Du gargon et de Vaveugle, 112 

Du Marsais, 452 

Dumas pere, 559-560 (Plays), 570- 

571 (Life and Novels), 519, 520, 

523, 554, 555, 597, 692 
Dumas fils, 597-600, 426, 601, 602, 

680, 681, 684, 717, 718 
Du Maurier, 528 
Dupanloup, 652 
Dupin, Aurore, see Sand 
Durante, 62 
Duruy, Victor, 659, 660 

Ecbasis captivi, 64 

Eilhart von Oberge, 43 

Einhard, 22 

Eleanor of Poitou, 33, 39, 51 

Eliot, George, 645, 648, 649, 714 

Emerson, 2, 9, 202, 203 

Encyclopedic, La Grande, 4&1-459, 

463, 473, 474 
Eneas, Roman de t 39, 38 
Ennius, 63 

d'Epinay, Mme, 484 
Erasmus, 128, 132, 142, 148, 149, 

153, 156 
Espinel, 436 
Estaunie, E., 730 
Estienne, Henri, 131, 199, 208 
d'Estissac, Geoffroy, 146 
Estoire de Tristan, 42, 41 



Etienne de Fougeres, 82 
Eulalie, Sainte, 18 
Euripides, 129, 239, 314, 315, 317 
Eustache Deschamps, 90-91, 36, 

131 
Eustorg de Beaulieu, 143 
Everyman, 109 
Eyquem, Michel, see Montaigne 

Fabre, Ferdinand, 666 

Fabri, Pierre, 132 

Faguet, Emile, 715-716, 374, 516 

658, 691 
Farce de Maitre Pathelin, 112 
Farel, Guillaume, 157 
Fauriel, 497, 554 
Favart, 427 
Fenelon, 357-360, 332, 334, 340 

(note), 346, 409, 492 
Feuillet, Octave, 669 
Feydeau, Ernest, 613 
Ficino, 128, 161, 164, 165 
Fielding, 435 
Filleul, 245 
Firdusi, 643 
Flamenca, 51-52, 86 
Flaubert, 614-618, 8, 441, 516, 574, 

591, 602, 613, 619, 623, 627, 629, 

630, 668, 675, 716, 717 
Flechier, 335 
Flers, R. de, 737 
Fleury, 410, 435 
Floire et Blanche fleur, 53 
Florian, 446, 718 , 
Florian-Parmentier, 732 
Florio, 202 
Folengo, 147 
Folie Tristan, 43 
Fontaine, Charles, 11$, 139 
Fontanes, 508, 576 
Fontenelle, 343-344 (Digression), 

378-382 (Life and Works), 254, 

270, 339, 340, 344, 346, 347, 351, 

358, 367, 368, 370, 373, 391, 416, 

428, 438, 444, 445 
Formey, 452 

Fort, Paul, 731-782, 702 (note), 708 
Foucher, Adele (Mme Hugo), 535, 

635 
Fouquet, 235, 257, 300 
Fourier, 646 
France, Anatole, 674-678 (Life and 



772 



INDEX 



Works), 718 (Criticism), 5, 8, 154, 

203, 634, 656, 664, 668, 695, 719 
Francis I, 110, 136, 138, 139, 140, 

156, 165, 166, 239, 558 
Frederick the Great, 362, 365, 378, 

385, 386, 387, 389, 471 
Freron, 385, 414, 464 
Froebel, 493 
Froissart, 76-78 (Life and Prose), 

91 (Poetry), 121, 206 
Fromentin, Eugene, 662, 565 
Furetiere, 227, 236, 314 
Fustel de Coulanges, 659-660, 401 

Gace Brule, 35 

Gaimer, Geoffrey, 73 

Galiani, 368 

Galileo, 264 

Gambetta, 663, 679 

Garat, 461 

Gamier, Robert, 242, 238, 243, 245, 

246 
Gamier de Pont-Sainte-Maxence, 

73, 15 
Gassendi, 268, 270, 291 
Gautier d'Arras, 61 
Gautier de Coincy, 85 
Gautier de Metz, 81 
Gautier, Theophile, 550-552 (Life 

and Poetry), 572-573 (Prose) 518, 

519, 521, 524, 544, 546, 556, 558, 

602, 605, 609, 611, 615, 627, 629, 

696, 701, 716 
Gawain (Sir) and the Green Knight, 

50 
Gay, Delphine, 520, 523 
Genlis, Mme de, 523 
Geoffrey Gaimar, 73 
Geoffrey of Monmouth, 41, 46 
Geoffrin, Mme de, 366, 368, 369, 379, 

413, 473 
Gerbert de Montreuil, 47, 48, 51 
Gerson, Jean le Charlier, 100-102, 

63, 98 
Geulincx, 271 
Ghil, Rene, 703, 706 
Gibbon, 401 
Gilbert, 447 
Gillot, 209, 345 
Giraldi Cinthio, 246, 247 
Girard de Roussillon, 28, 27 
Giraud, V., 717 



Glatigny, 605 

Godeau, 226 

Godefroi de Bouillon, 19 

Godefroi de Leigni, 46 

Goethe, 5, 66, 152, 190, 299, 480, 

503, 504, 522, 527 
Gombault, 226, 227 
Gomberville, Marin Leroy de, 232 
Goncourt, the brothers, 627-629, 613, 

621, 624, 633, 681, 713, 716, 719 
Goncourt, E. de, 630, 633, 730 
Gongora, 222 
Gooch, G. P., 579, 660 
Gottfried von Strassburg, 43 
Goujon, Jean, 131 
Gourmont, Jean de, 709 
Gourmont, Remy de, 725 
Gournay, Mile de, 216, 217 
Graal, Conte del, 47 
Graelent, 53 
Grail, Holy, 47, 48 
Greban, Arnoul, 106 
Greban, the brothers, 105 
Greban, Simon, 107 
Gregh, Femand, 721 
Gresset, 427, 446 
Greuze, 479 
Grevin, 241, 244 
Grimm, 368, 412, 473, 484, 485 
Grignan, Mme de, 269, 288, 289 
Gringoire, Pierre, 108, 109 
Griseldis, Estoire de, 72 
Guarini, 245 
Guazzo, 284 
Guerard, A., 662 
Guevara, 435 
Gui de Blois, 77 
Gui de Mori, 63 
Guido delle Colonne, 40, 108 
Guillaume Alexis, 113 
Guillaume d'Angleterre, 44 
Guillaume de Digulleville, 63 
Guillaume de Dole, 51 
Guillaume de Lorris, 56-59, 62, 63 
Guillaume de Machaut, 89-90, 36, 

131 
Guiraud, Alexandre, 519 
Guiron, 53 
Guizot, 579-580, 364, 505, 521 (note), 

578, 583, 584, 659 
Guttinguer, Ulric, 520 
Guyon, Mme, 334, 357 



INDEX 



773 



Halevy, 595 

Haller, 463 

Hanska, Mme de, 586, 587 

Hardy, Alexandre, 245-248, 207, 
238, 259, 260, 261, 554 

Harrison, Frederic, 648 

Hauptmann, G., 681 

Hegel, 578, 649 

Heinrich der Glichezare, 66 

Hein van Aken, 62 

Heine, 120, 504 

Heliodorus, 313 

Helvetius, C, 461 

Henault, President, 367, 368, 410 

Hennequin, Emile, 712, 717 

Hennique, 624, 681 

Henri d'Andeli, 83, 84, 102 

Henri de Valenciennes, 74-75 

Henry IV, 218, 389 

Henry of Saltrey, 52 

d'Herberay des Essarts, 229 

Herder, 657 

Heredia, Jose-Maria de, 609-611, 
539, 695, 709, 719 

Herodotus, 208, 393 

Heroet, 164 

Herrick, 188 

Hervieu, Paul, 684-685, 6, 566, 686, 736 

Historia regum Britanniae, see 
Geoffrey of Monmouth 

Hoffmann, 522, 528 

d'Holbach, Baron, 461, 473, 478 

Homer, 5, 94, 137, 158, 178, 181, 314, 
315, 340, 343, 358, 444, 445, 523, 
548, 606 

Horace, 94, 129, 172, 173, 175, 179, 
180, 185, 186, 240, 325, 326, 327, 
347, 461, 641 

Houdar, see Lamotte 

d'Houdetot, Mme, 484, 487 

Housse partie, La, 85 

Huet, 340 (note), 342 

Hugh Capet, 14, 15, 19 

Hugo, Victor, 534-543 (Life and 
Poetry), 554-559 (Plays), 569- 
570 (Novels), 6, 7, 118, 183, 192, 
276, 280, 504, 516, 517, 519, 520, 
521, 522, 523, 524, 525, 544, 545, 
550, 553, 560, 562, 568, 573, 581, 
588, 589, 595, 603, 606, 610, 635, 
636, 638, 679, 688, 692, 693, 698, 
712, 734 



Humboldt, 608 

Hume, 484 

Huon de Bordeaux, 29 

Huysmans, 665-666, 619, 624, 706 

Ibsen, 681, 686 

Irving, Sir Henry, 680 

Isabella of Navarre, 69 

Jacquemard Gelee, 66 

Jacques de Vitry, 85 

Jacques Millet, 108 

James, Henry, 8, 439, 593 

James, William, 722, 723 

Jammes, Francis, 703, 708, 731 

Jansen, 306, 307, 308 

Jaucourt, Chevalier de, 452, 458 

Jean Bodel, see Bodel 

Jean de Meun, 59-62, 56, 58, 63, 92, 

98, 100, 101, 143 
Jean de Montreuil, 99-100, 63, 101 
Jean le Charlier, see Gerson 
Jeanne of Champagne, 75 
Jeu du Pelerin, 71 
Joanna of Flanders, 47 
Jodelle, 171, 174, 175, 176, 178, 183, 

240, 244 
John of Garland, 80 
Joinville, 75-76 

Joubert, Joseph, 576, 334, 498, 508 
Joufrois, 51 
Jullien, J., 681 
Jurieu, 373 

Jusserand, J.-J., 184, 651 (note) 
Juvenal, 326 

Kahn, Gustave, 699, 706, 707 

Kant, 4, 409, 504, 723 

Kean, Edmund, 554 

Keats, 449 

Kemble, Charles, 554 

Kempis, Thomas a, 211 

Kepler, 264 

Ker, W. P., 53 

Kiot, 49 

Knox, John, 158 

La Barre, 464 

Labe, Louise, 169 

Labiche, Emile, 595 

La Bruyere, 349-352, 136, 219, 280, 



774 



INDEX 



281, 340 (note), 344, 347, 380, 397, 

435, 592 
La Calprenede, 238, 235, 236, 314, 

326 
La Chaussee, 431, 432 
Lacordaire, 577 
La Fare, 446 
La Fayette, Mme de, 287-288, 222, 

235, 276, 283, 284, 289 
La Fontaine, 300-305, 84, 207, 216, 

276, 279, 293, 313, 314, 324, 340 

(note), 342, 343, 390, 622, 693, 734 
Laforgue, Jules, 699, 706 
La Fosse, 322 
La Harpe, 464 
Lai du Cor, 53 
Lalanne, 205 
Lamarck, 460, 635 
Lamartine, 580-533, 184, 185, 189, 

447, 448, 494, 504, 508, 516, 517, 

518, 519, 521, 523, 524, 525, 528, 

538, 549, 576, 577, 613, 638, 695, 

715 
Lambert, Mme de, 366, 367, 379, 395, 

436 
Lamennais, Abbe de, 577, 575, 576, 

636, 640 
La Mettrie, 478 
La Mothe le Vayer, 270 
Lamotte, 444-445, 340, 343, 344, 359, 

408, 409, 416, 428 
Lancaster, H. C, 246 
Lancelot (Prose), 46 
Lancelot, Claude, 307, 313 
Landor, W. S., 378 
Lang, Andrew, 54, 96 
Langlois, 80 
La Noue, de, 204, 206 
Lanson, Gustave, 715, 8, 78, 165, 189, 

224, 245, 264, 285, 287, 289, 297, 

371, 431, 531, 711 
La Peruse, 175, 176 
Laplace, 461 
Larivey, 244-U& 

La Rochefoucauld, 283-285, 276, 
279, 287, 303, 330, 350, 352, 355, 
639 
La Sale, Antoine de, 114 
Lavedan, Henri, 681, 687, 736, 
Lavisse, Ernest, 273, 275, 661 (and 

note) 
Lebrun, 445, 446 



Le Cuvier, 112 

Leconte de Lisle, 605-609, 449, 539, 

548, 610, 623, 695, 697, 702, 717 
Lefevre d'Etaples, 155 
Lefevre, Jules, 520, 523 
Lefranc, Abel, 138, 150 
Legenda Aurea, 98 
Leger, Vie de Saint, 19 
Leibnitz, 375, 385, 460, 477, 646 
Le Kain, 463 
Lemaire de Beiges, Jean, 133-135, 

40, 132, 137, 173 
Lemaitre, Jules, 719, 7, 315, 320, 321, 

484, 634, 649, 687, 691, 697, 714, 

715 
Lemercier, Nepomucene, 553 
Leo X, 130 

Leo Hebraeus, 169, 176 
Leonard, 446, 447 
Leroy, Jean, 209 
Le Roy, 722, 723 
Leroux, 646 
Lesage, 425-426 (Plays), 434-438 

(Life and Fiction), 424, 440, 443 
Lespinasse, Julie de, 869, 366, 452, 

473, 476, 500 
Lessing, 85, 409, 504 
Letourneur, 371 
Lewes, G. H., 648 
Lewis " Monk " 589 
Lillo, 432 
Littre, 646, 648 

Livy, 81, 94, 98, 115, 377, 400, 650 
Locke, John, 370, 371, 384, 403, 453, 

454, 461, 465, 466, 467 
Longfellow, 97 
Longpierre, 322 
Longueville, Duchess of, 220, 222, 

578 
Lope de Vega, 247, 262 
Lorenzino, 244 

Loti, Pierre, 678-674, 516, 665, 713 
Louis XIV, 273-282, 219, 223, 253, 

254, 257, 269, 290, 291, 294, 295, 

299, 300, 301, 312, 315, 316, 319, 

320, 324, 325, 330, 332, 335, 341, 

347, 348, 351, 355, 392, 635 
Louis XV, 453 
Lucan, 37, 94, 115 
Lucian, 326. 378 
Lucretius, 200, 270, 292, 450, 476, 

478 



INDEX 



775 



Luther, 146, 154, 211 
Luynes, Due de, 265 
Lyly, 222 

Mabinogion, 50 

Machaut, Guillaume de, 89-90, 36, 

131 
Machiavelli, 123, 386 
Mackenzie, Compton, 727 (note) 
Macpherson, 372, 446, 502, 523 
Maeterlinck, Maurice, 688-691, 698, 

703, 736 
Maffei, 419 

Magny, Olivier de, 175, 188 
Mahieu le Poirier, 63 
Maindron, Maurice, 730 
Maintenon, Mme de, 289-290, 236, 

274, 319, 320, 354, 357 
Mairet, 232, 248, 252, 260 
Maistre, Joseph de, 576-577, 662 
Maistre, Xavier de, 577 
Malebranche, 270-272, 397 
Malesherbes, 508 
Maleville, 226 
Malfilatre, 447 
Malherbe, 213-217, 173, 176, 188, 

189, 191, 207, 208, 211, 212, 218, 

222, 225, 227, 228, 235, 248, 261, 

327, 329, 330, 342, 359 
Mallarme, 704-706, 699, 702, 703, 

708 
Mallet, 452, 458 
Malory, Sir Thomas, 41, 49 
Manessier, 47, 48 
Manteau mal taille, 53 
Manzoni, 522, 554 
Map, Walter, 49 
Marais, 412, 413 
Marbode, 81 
Marguerite d'Angouleme, 165-166, 

132, 137, 139, 143, 153, 160, 164, 167 
Margueritte, Paul, 667-668, 665 
Margueritte, Victor, 667 
Marie of Champagne, 33, 43, 44, 45 
Marie de France, 52-53, 15, 64 
Marinetti, 721, 731 
Marino, 220, 222 
Mari qui fist sa femme confesse, 

84 
Marivaux, l$7-!$9 (Plays), 438-440 

(Novels), 255, 365, 367, 368, 426, 

434 (note), 443, 560 



Marmontel, 368, 406, 413, 452, 458, 

464, 497 
Marot, Clement, 136-142, 63, 94, 107, 

132, 134, 143, 144, 148, 153, 172, 

179, 188, 216, 302 
Marot, Jean, 136 
Martial, 142 
Martin, Henri, 660 
Marullus, 181 
Massenet, 85 

Matthews, Brander, 434 (note) 
Maturin, Charles, 589 
Maupassant, Guy de, 619-622, 6, 542, 

614, 623, 624, 718 
Maupertuis, 370, 387, 478 
Maurras, Charles, 726 
Maynard, Frangois, 215, 216 
Maynial, 620 
Meigret, Louis, 163 
Meilhac, 595 
Melanchthon, 158 
Menage, 223, 227, 287, 288, 296, 340 

(note) 
Mendes, Catulle, 605, 688, 693, 707, 

708 
Mendoza, 293 
Menippee, Satire, 207-210 
Mercier, Sebastien, 423, 553 
Mere, Chevalier de, 286 
Merimee, Prosper, 567-568 (His- 
torical Novel), 571-572 (Tales 

and Fantasies), 519, 524 
Merrill, Stuart, 707-708, 699, 706, 

735 (note) 
Metenier, 681 
Michaut, G., 639 
Michel (de Bourges), 575 
Michel, Jean, 107 
Michelangelo, 727 
Michelet, Jules, 581-583, 3, 567, 580, 

646, 657, 660 
Mieulx que devant, 112 
Mignet, 584, 583 
Mill, J. S., 645, 646, 647, 648 
Millet, Jacques, 108 
Milton, 2, 183, 191, 192, 312, 328, 

502, 513 
Minturno, 175 
Mirabeau, Gabriel, Marquis de, 497, 

515 
Miracles de Notre Dame, Quarante, 

70 






776 



INDEX 



Mirbeau, Octave, 684, 667, 683 

Mistral, Frederic, 609 (note), 630 

Modus, Le roi Modus et la reine 
Ratio, 88 

Moliere, 291-300, 9, 84, 113, 145, 154, 
216, 223, 228, 234, 235, 236, 239, 
244, 245, 253, 259, 269, 270, 276, 
277, 279, 280, 282, 285, 301, 312, 
314, 315, 317, 324, 326, 328, 330, 
340, 342, 351, 359, 424, 425, 427, 
438, 490 (note), 596, 680 

Molinet, Jean, 63, 134 

Monde et Abuz, 112 

Mondory, 251, 252 

Monluc, 137, 204, 206 

Monod, 582, 583 

Montaigne, 195-203, 3, 4, 9, 128, 130, 
137, 154, 163, 187, 193, 194, 204, 
207, 210, 217, 224, 232, 245, 263, 
270, 271, 284, 308, 311, 350, 377, 
397, 484, 630 

Montalembert, 577 

Montausier, Marquis de, 222 

Montchretien, 243 

Montemayor, 229 

Montespan, Mme de, 274, 290 

Montesquieu, 395-405, 334, 347, 354, 
364, 367, 368, 370, 371, 378, 391, 
408, 409, 410, 416, 446, 452, 457, 
464, 472, 491, 501, 502, 579, 658, 
659, 660, 716 

Montesquiou, Comte Robert de, 706 

Moore, Edward, 432 

Moore, George, 593 

More, Sir Thomas, 153 

Moreas, Jean, 699, 706 

Morellet, 452, 464 

Moreri, 374 

Morillot, 191 

Morley, John, Viscount, 407, 453, 
469 

Morny, Due de, 630, 631 

Muret, Marc-Antoine de, 175, 196, 
241 

Musset, Alfred de, 544-547 (Poetry), 
560-562 (Plays), 4, 6, 7, 429, 494, 
519, 520, 522, 523, 524, 538, 550, 
555, 565, 574, 638, 649, 680, 691, 
698 

Mystere de Saint Crispin et Saint 
Crispian, 104 

Mystere de Saint Louis, 104, 110 



Napoleon I, 496, 497, 498, 503, 508, 
515, 517, 519, 521, 528, 529, 535, 
538, 553, 565, 570, 584, 589, 651, 
652 

Napoleon III, 530, 535, 538, 584, 
612, 659 

Narbonne, 498 

Navagero, 187 

Necker, 496, 497 

Nerval, Gerard de, 520, 522 

Nevelet, 302 

Newton, 370, 384, 385, 454, 456, 465 

Nicole de Margival, 63 

Nicole, Pierre, 294, 307, 313 

Niebuhr, 657 

Nietzsche, 280, 476, 686, 716 

Ninon de Lenclos, 235, 270, 324 

Nisard, 634-635, 330 

Nivard, 64 

Noailles, Comtesse Mathieu de, 731 

Nodier, Charles, 527-52S, 504, 520, 
522, 524, 572 

North, Lord, 194 

Norton, Miss, 202 

Ogier, 247 

Oresme, Nicolas, 99, 88, 98, 102, 239 

Orfeo, Sir, 53 

Orosius, 115 

Ossian, see Macpherson 

Ovid, 33, 37, 39, 44, 45, 46, 52, 55, 

59, 60, 61, 82, 132, 134, 142, 172, 

180, 184, 216, 445 

Pailleron, Edouard, 680, 429 

Palissot, 427 

Paris, Gaston, 711, 1, 3, 24, 41, 43, 
78, 112, 718 

Parnasse Contemporain, Le, 605, 
606 

Parny, 447-448 

Partenopeus de Blois, 50, 51 

Pascal 306-312, 3, 8, 153, 159, 200, 
201, 203, 210, 223, 228, 263, 269, 
277, 279, 280, 281, 282, 286, 325, 
330, 339, 350, 407, 457, 466, 475, 
513, 725 

Pasquier, Etienne, 94, 175, 198, 208 

Passerat, 209 

Passion (Mystere de la), 105-107 

Passion (poem on), 19 

Patin, 270 



INDEX 



777 



Patru, 227 

Paulet, Mile, 223 

Payne, John, 121 

Peguy, Charles, 732, 720, 725, 727, 

731, 735 (note) 
Pelerinage de Charlemagne, 25-26 
Peletier, Jacques, 163, 174, 175, 176, 

178, 185 
Pellisson, 253 
Perceval, 47, 48 
Perceval (Prose), 49 
Percy velle, Sir, (Middle English), 

49 
Perefixe, 287 
Perlesvaus, 49 
Perrault, the brothers, 341 
Perrault, Charles, 341-342, 344-346, 

325, 339, 340, 343, 348 
Perrault, Claude, 328 
Perrin d'Angecourt, 71 
Pestalozzi, 493 
Petrarch, 62, 76, 83, 88, 89, 102, 128, 

138, 175, 179, 181, 184, 185, 187, 

380, 381, 531 
Petrus Alphonsus, 82, 85 
Phaedrus, 64, 302 
Philip of Flanders, 43, 47 
Philippa, Queen, 76 
Philippe de Beaumanoir, 36 
Philippe de Novaire, 82 
Philippe de Thaon, 80, 81 
Physiologies, 79, 80 
Pierre Bercuire, 98-99, 88 
Pierre Col, 101 
Pierre d'Ailly, 100 
Pierre de Beauvais, 73 
Pierre de Saint-Cloud, 66 
Pindar, 179, 181, 314, 446 
Piron, 424, 427, 445 
Pithou, 209 

Pixerecourt, 553, 554, 559, 589 
Plato, 60, 102, 128, 129, 132, 153, 159, 

160, 161, 163, 164, 172, 175, 176, 

185, 191, 199, 397, 466, 487, 489, 

576, 578, 616, 704 
Plautus, 244, 246. 291, 296, 299 
Plutarch, 194, 195, 198, 377, 492 
Poe, Edgar Allan, 602, 603, 702, 705 
Poeme Moral, 82 
Poggio, 118 
Politian, 153 
Pomairols, C. de, 725 



Pompadour, Mme de, 366, 386, 451 
Pompignan, Lefranc de, 389, 446, 

464 
Pons, Abbe de, 340 (note) 
Ponsard, 595, 596 
Pope, Alexander, 278, 326, 330, 371, 

384, 385, 465, 468, 641 
Poquelin, see Moliere 
Porto-Riche, Georges de, 685-686, 

681, 688 
Pradon, 318, 322, 340 (note) 
Prescott, William, 504 
Prevost, Abbe, 440-44®, &±, 371, 413, 

443 
Prevost, Marcel, 672 
Prevost-Paradol, 648 
Propertius, 180 
Prophetes du Christ, 68 
Proudhon, 575, 636, 646 
Proust, Marcel, 727 (note) 
Prudentius, 55, 83 
Prudhomme, Sully, see Sully Prud- 

homme 
Pseudo-Turpin, 20, 73 
Pushkin, 670 

Quern quaeritis, 68 

Quesnay, 456 

Quinault, 314, 315, 322 

Quinet, Edgar, 657-658 

Quintilian, 129, 163, 172 

Quinze joyes de manage, 117, 118 

Rabelais, 149-154, 8, 62, 103, 127, 
130, 132, 133, 143, 150, 158, 162, 
165, 167, 195, 203, 209, 210, 291, 
339, 474, 482, 492, 585, 587, 677, 
726 

Racan, Honorat de Bueil, Marquis 
de, 215, 216, 235 

Racine, Jean, 312-322, 1, 6, 7, 145, 
194, 213, 218, 236, 239, 242, 249, 
253, 254, 260, 262, 276, 277, 279, 
280, 281, 286, 290, 301, 306, 307, 
324, 326, 340, 341, 342, 359, 379, 
400, 415, 416, 417, 420, 421, 422, 
427, 428, 444, 445, 448, 449, 513, 
518, 533, 553, 562, 609, 684, 719 

Rambaud, 661 (note) 

Rambouillet, Catherine de Vivonne, 
Marquise de, 221, 130, 222, 224. 
225, 226, 231, 248 



778 



INDEX 



Rameau, 480 

Ramee, Pierre de la, see Ramus 

Ramus, 132, 161, 263 

Raoul de Cambrai, 27-28 

Raoul de Houdenc, 50, 55 

Rapin, Nicolas, 209, 216 

Rapin, le Pere, 287, 340 (note) 

Recamier, Mme, 497, 509, 636 

Regnard, 424-425, 426 

Regnier, Henri de, 708-710, 7, 699, 

706, 730 
Regnier, Mathurin, 216, 207, 217, 

546 
Re jane, Mme, 680 
Renan, Ernest, 652-666, 6, 627, 649, 

659, 672, 675, 676, 716, 718, 719 
Renan, Henriette, 652, 653 
Renard, Roman de, see Roman de 

Renard 
Renard le Contrefait, 66 
Renaud de Beaujeu, 50 
Renclus (Barthelemy) de Moilliens, 

82 
Rene of Anjou, 89, 114 
Renee, Duchess of Ferrara, 139, 157 
Renouvier, 722 
Retz, Cardinal de, 286-286, 220, 283, 

353, 411, 580 
Richard de Fournival, 81 
Richardson, Samuel, 233, 371, 439, 

440, 479, 481, 487 
Richelieu, 130, 219, 220, 222, 225, 

228, 247, 248, 252, 273, 284, 285, 

378 
Richepin, 688 
Richeut, 84 

Rigaud de Barbezieux, 33 
Rimbaud, Arthur, 708, 699, 700, 706 
Rivarol, 6, 717 
Robert de Blois, 82 
Robert de Boron, 48, 49 
Robert de Clari, 74-75 
Robespierre, 449, 493, 652 
Rocca, Delia, 706 
Rod, Edouard, 566, 669, 672 
Rodenbach, 699, 703, 704 
Rohan, Chevalier de, 384 
Rojas, Francisco de, 262 
Roland, Chanson de, see Chanson 

de Roland 
Roland, Mme, 194, 493 
Rolland, Romain, 726-730, 720, 732 



Romains, Jules, 721, 731 

Roman de Renard, 63-67, 693 

Roman de la Rose, 56-63, 18, 55, 76, 
98, 101, 117, 131, 137 

Roman des sept sages, 85 

Romulus, 52, 64 

Ronsard, Pierre de, 179-183, 6, 40, 
134, 135, 136, 142, 144, 171, 173, 
175, 176, 177, 178, 184, 185, 187, 
188, 189, 190, 191, 193, 203, 208, 
212, 213, 215, 217, 218, 227, 247, 
277, 389, 449, 519, 609 

Rosny, J.-H., 665, 668, 681 

Rossetti, D. G., 120 

Rossini, 429 

Rostand, Edmond, 691-694, 232, 237, 
270, 291, 539, 688, 706 

Rotrou, 261-262, 222, 248, 314, 322 

Roucher, 446 

Rouget de l'lsle, 448 (note) 

Rousseau, J.-B., 386 

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 483-494, 
194, 199, 201, 278, 298, 359, 370, 
371, 378, 386, 388, 407, 411, 412, 
434 (note), 440, 443, 446, 452, 463, 
472, 473, 474, 495, 497, 500, 507, 
510, 511, 521, 530, 531, 564, 565, 
574, 658, 714, 719 

Royer-Collard, 517 

Rutebeuf, 69-70, 66 

Ryer, Pierre du, 261-262, 232, 248 

Sable, Mme de, 223, 269, 283, 284, 
307, 578 

Sabliere, Marquise de la, 301, 305 

Sacchetti, 167 

Sagon, Frangois de, 139 

Saint-Cyran, Jean de Hauranne, 
Abbe de, 306, 308 

Sainte-Beuve, 635-644, 66, 180, 184, 
188, 191, 203, 283, 286, 321, 325, 
341, 377, 448, 498, 499, 505, 519, 
520, 521, 522, 527, 532, 535, 537, 
544, 545, 547, 564, 576, 580, 582, 
613, 627, 634, 645, 649, 651, 698, 
712, 715, 719 

Saint-Evremond, 286, 270, 316, 340 
(note), 346, 383 

Saint-Gelais, Mellin de, 144, 139, 
143, 180, 185 

Saint-Gelais, Octovien de, 132 

Sainte-Hilaire, Geoffroy de, 460 



INDEX 



779 



Saint-Lambert, 386, 446 
Sainte-Marthe, Charles de, 143 
Saint-Pierre, Abbe de, 409-410 
Saint-Pierre, Bernardin de, 494~495 
Saint-Simon, Louis, Due de, 353- 

356, 275, 276, 288, 349, 357, 364, 

408, 410, 411, 515 
Saint-Simon, Henri de, 580, 636, 640, 

645, 647, 653 

Saint-Sorlin, Desmarets de, 233, 248, 

340, 341 
Saint-Valry, 519 
Saintsbury, George, 39, 58, 117, 143, 

312 
Sales, Saint Frangois de, 211, 207, 

212, 230, 232, 288, 332 
Salluste, Guillaume de, see Bartas 
Samain, 703, 704, 708 
Sand, George, 573-575, 501, 516, 519, 

544, 561, 565, 571, 613, 614, 638, 

646, 669 
Sandeau, Jules, 574 
Sannazzaro, 135, 144, 172, 229, 245 
Sarcey, Francisque, 717-718, 648 
Sardou, Victorien, 679-680, 681, 688, 

718 
Sarrasin, 226 
Scaliger, 175, 249 
Scarron, 235, 236, 290, 292, 326, 381, 

573 
Sceve, Maurice, 167-168, 176 
Schelandre, 247 

Scherer, 482, 634 (and note), 645 
Schiller, 498, 504, 505, 522 
Schlegel, A. W., 504, 554 
Schopenhauer, 608 
Schure, E., 725 
Scott, Sir Walter, 524, 498, 499, 520, 

525, 567, 568, 570, 580, 587, 588 
Scribe, Eugene, 595, 601, 679, 680, 

718 
Scudery, George de, 234-235, 222, 

232, 248, 252, 255 
Scudery, Mile de, 234-235, 221, 223, 

236, 326, 380 
Sebillet, 169, 171, 239 
Sebond, Raymond de, 196 
Sedaine, 427 
Segrais, 287, 340 (note) 
Seilliere, 725 
Senancour, 522, 564 
Seneca, 94, 95, 129, 155, 158, 171, 



176, 198, 259, 314, 381 
Serafino dall'Aquilla, 139, 168 
Servients de Strasbourg, 14 
Servetus, 158 
Sevigne, Mme de, 288-289, 222, 254, 

269, 270, 274, 283, 287, 290, 301, 

315 
Shaftesbury, 371, 397, 465, 475 
Shakespeare, 1, 2, 5, 35, 46, 51, 71, 

106, 108, 129, 194, 202, 240, 247, 

317, 321, 371, 384, 385, 415, 417, 

418, 422, 466, 502, 505, 522, 523, 

554, 555, 559, 560, 562, 570, 592, 

651, 655, 688, 726 
Shaw, Bernard, 298, 553 
Shelley, 3, 533, 651 
Sheridan, 429 
Siege d'Orleans, 108 
Silvester, 191 
Simon, Richard, 332 
Sismondi, 522 
Smithson, Miss, 554 
Socrates, 163, 199, 699, 700 
Soderjelm, 117 
Solinus, 79 
Somaize, 223 
Songe du Vergier, 88 
Sophocles, 129, 239, 262 
Sorel, Albert, 660 
Sorel, Charles, 235, 236 
Soulie, F., 522 

Soumet, Alexandre, 519, 520, 554 
Spencer, Herbert, 645, 714, 717, 722 
Spenser, Edmund, 164 
Speroni, Sperone, 172 
Spinoza, 271, 658 
Sponsus, 68 
Stael, Mme de, 497-505, 372, 403, 

496, 507, 513, 521, 523, 554, 564, 

578, 634 
Statius, 37, 94 
Stendhal, 565-566, 506, 519, 564, 567, 

574, 625, 649, 716, 717 
Sterne, 154, 371, 480 
Stevenson, R. L., 118 
Sturel, 193 
Suares, A., 732 
Sudre, 64 

Sue, Eugene, 571, 589 
Suetonius, 115, 204, 316 
Sully Prudhomme, 695-697, 605 
Sulzer, 458 



780 



INDEX 



Swedenborg, 587 

Swift, Jonathan, 154, 384, 397, 677 

Swinburne, 543, 702 

Symonds, J. A., 129 

Tacitus, 316, 393, 400 

Taille, Jacques de la, 242 

Taille, Jean de la, 174, 241, 244 

Taillefer, 20 

Taine, 648-652, 275, 305, 363, 364, 

366, 547, 566, 623, 627, 634, 641, 

643, 659, 671, 712, 714, 716, 717, 

719 
Tallemant des Reaux, 221, 234 
Talleyrand, 365, 498, 530 
Talma, 553 
Tansillo, 189, 213 
Tasso, 183, 189, 237, 245, 328 
Tassoni, 326, 341 
Tebaldeo, 139, 168, 189 
Tencin, Mme de, 367-368, 366, 395, 

452 
Tennyson, 41, 44, 49, 547 
Terence, 244, 291, 293, 300 
Thebes, Roman de, 38-39, 51 
Theocritus, 172, 177, 181, 445, 576, 

606 
Theuriet, Andre, 669 
Theophrastus, 350 (note) 
Thibault, Jacques-Anatole, 

see France, Anatole 
Thibaut de Blois, 51 
Thibaut de Navarre, 35 
Thierry, Amedee, 580 
Thierry, Augustin, 580-581, 514, 525, 

567, 583 
Thiers, 583-584, 612, 659, 663 
Thomas, 42, 43 
Thomas Aquinas, St., 80, 100 
Thomson, James, 371, 446 
Tibullus, 445 
Ticknor, 504 
Tinayre, Mme, 730 
Tiraqueau, 127, 146 
Tocqueville, Count Alexis de, 658- 

659, 660 
Toland, 371 

Tolstoy, 570, 670, 681, 726, 727, 729 
Tombeor Nostre Dame, 85 
Tory, Geoffroy, 138, 153 
Tracy, Destutt de, 461, 565 (note), 

635 



Trissino, 144, 239 

Tristan l'Ermite, 313 

Tristan, Estoire de, 42, 41 

Tristan, Folie, 43 

Tristan (Prose), 43 

Tristrem, Sir, 43 

Troie, Roman de, 39-40, 38 

Turgenev, 630, 653, 716 

Turgot, 452, 456, 496 

Turnebe, Odet de, 244 

Turoldus, 22 

Turpin, Pseudo-, see Pseudo-Turpin 

Tyard, Pontus de, 169, 175, 176 

Tycho Brahe, 264 

Tydorel, 53 

Tyolet, 53 

d'Urfe, Honore, 229-232 

Vair, Du, 207, 210, 211, 232 

Valla, Lorenzo, 135 

Valleran, Lecomte, 238, 245 

Valliere, Mile de la, 331 

Valois, Margaret of, 180, 204 

Van Dale, 381 

Varro, 209 

Vatable, 140 

Vaugelas, 227, 228, 277 

Vaumoriere, 233 (note) 

Vauquelin de la Fresnaye, 174 

Vauvenargues, 406-407 

Verdi, 558 

Verdier, Du, 184 

Vergil, 37, 40, 46, 94, 128, 134, 142, 

158, 171, 172, 177, 180, 181, 183, 

185, 190, 200, 201, 315, 358, 380, 

513 
Verhaeren, Emile, 732-736, 699, 706, 

708, 720, 721, 731 
Verlaine, Paul, 699-702, 605, 695, 

703, 704, 705, 719, 731 
Veuillot, Louis, 661-662, 577, 658 
Viau, Theophile de, 216, 217, 218, 

313 
Viaud, Julien, see Loti, Pierre 
Vico, 581 
Vida, 172, 175 

Vie de Saint Alexis, see Alexis 
Vie de Saint Martin, 105, 108 
Viele-Griffin, Francis, 707-708, 699, 

704, 706, 735 (note) 
Viennet, 183 



INDEX 



781 



Vigny, Alfred de, 647-550 (Life 
and Poetry), 562 (Drama), 567 
(Novel), 6, 7, 519, 520, 523, 524, 
525, 533, 539, 544, 554, 555, 565, 
638. 695, 698, 716 

Vilain Mire, 84 

Villehardouin, 73-74, 75, 121 

Villemain, 578, 505, 521 (note), 634, 
642 

Villiers de l'lsle-Adam, 573 

Villon, Francois, 118-121, 6, 69, 89, 
96, 110, 114, 137, 138, 153, 217, 711 

Vincent de Beauvais, 98 

Vinci, Leonardo da, 131 

Vinet, 335 

Vitry, Philippe de, 121 

Vivonne, Catherine de, see Ram- 
bouillet 

Vogue, Melchior de, 670, 656, 669 

Voiture, Vincent, 225-226, 218, 222, 
234, 268, 332, 342 

Volney, 461 

Voltaire, 383-394 (Literature and 
Life), 415-421 (Criticism and 
Drama), 463-472 (Polemics and 
Philosophy), 3, 62, 183, 203, 251, 
272, 273, 293, 316, 335, 355, 362, 
365, 367, 368, 369, 370, 371, 373, 
377, 378, 380, 382, 395, 398, 405, 
406, 412, 414, 422, 427, 428, 429, 
431, 432, 434 (note), 436, 437, 438, 
440, 444, 445, 446, 451, 452, 453, 



454, 456, 457, 458, 461, 498, 513, 
523, 534, 553, 644, 646, 654, 675, 
678, 715, 716 
Vrai aniel, see Dit dou vrai amel 

Wace, 15, 20, 39, 41, 73 

Wagner, Richard, 699, 726, 727 

Walpole, Horace, 368, 369 

Warens, Mme de, 483, 486, 487 

Wauchier de Denain, 47, 48 

Wassermann, 727 (note) 

Watteau, 365, 427, 700 

Wells, B. W, 666 

Whitman, Walt, 731, 735 (and note) 

Wilde, Oscar, 666 

Willem (author of the Dutch 

Reinaert), 66 
William IX of Poitou, 33 
Wolfram von Eschenbach, 49 
Wordsworth, 2, 637, 643, 698 
Wright, C. H. C, 281, 317 
Wyatt, 144 

Young, Edward, 371, 446, 447 

Ysengrimus, 64 

Ysopet de Lyon, etc., 64 

Zamacoi's, 693 

Zola, Emile. 623-627, 566, 613, 619, 

628, 632, 664, 665, 667, 668, 670, 

681, 718 



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